The Bacillus of Beauty: A Romance of To-day

by Harriet Stark

THE JOY OF THE SUNSHINE.

CHAPTER I.

CHRISTMAS.

No. — East 72d Street, Dec. 28.

Milly and I have just come from a run in the Park, and here I am this shining white morning scribbling away in my own cosey room.

My very own room—for the most delightful thing has happened; I'm visiting Mrs. Baker—Aunt Frank I am to call her, though she is really Ma's cousin—and she has asked me to spend the rest of the winter here.

So I've really left the den. And I didn't deserve it. Why, when Mrs. Baker invited me to dinner on Christmas day, I dreaded the visit. I hadn't seen her since I came from the West, and I wondered what she'd think of me, and what she'd write to Mother. If Pa and Ma could see me now, would they say their little Nelly'd "filled out well-favoured?"

What would they say to me?

Why, Christmas morning, when I read the home letters, I felt as if I had betrayed my parents' confidence, as if I'd robbed them of their child by changing into such a lovely creature. Then I laughed; they won't mind my getting rid of freckles and a pug nose. And then I cried, almost, and felt so lonely, for even Kitty had gone off with Pros.; and so far away and so happy, and a good deal troubled with it all; for John had sent me some roses and a ring, and I knew I should find him at my Aunt's, eager to see whether I wore them.

John's such a problem. All that day I sat alone in the den, trying to think, and trying to let down the hem of my waterproof, for it was snowing and I have only one good dress; and every few minutes I would slip on the ring and pull it off, watching the rainbow lights that flashed and paled in the heart of the stone, and smiling because John had chosen an opal; I wonder if he knows it's the gem of the beautiful woman.

In the end I let it stay on my hand, of course, for, after all, I suppose I am betrothed to him.

So it happened that I was almost late for dinner at the Bakers', and quite late when I really got inside the house; for I walked past the door two or three times before I could muster up courage to ring the bell. When I finally ran up the steps, my umbrella was powdered white, and snow and water were dripping off my skirts. My heart was beating fast with dread and expectation; I was sure no one would know me.

"I—I'm too wet for the parlour," I said to the maid who came to let me in; and after a single startled, puzzled look, she went to tell some one of my arrival. There I stood in my shabby mackintosh, looking at a huge, gilt-framed picture of the Judge, until a plump little robin of a woman, in a black dress with a dash of red at the throat, came trotting out to meet me.

That was Aunt; in spite of my fright and self-consciousness I wanted to laugh to see her bright eyes look at me in amazement that grew almost to panic. She didn't know me; the servant could not have caught my name.

"Did you—wish to see me?" she finally managed to say.

"I'm Helen Winship—" I faltered. I felt as if I had done something very wrong.

"Nelly!" she cried, clutching my hands and almost lifting herself on tiptoe, as she blinked into my eyes in the uncertain light of the outer hall. "This isn't—can't be—not our Helen Winship—oh, it's some message from her—some—"

Her voice died away in incoherent mutterings. She drew me into a big hall like a sitting room behind the small parlour.

"Come into the light, child, whoever you are. I want to look at you," she said.

An open fire was burning in the grate, and in the room were Milly and Ethel and white-haired Miss Marcia and a tall, blonde young man.

All rose to their feet, then stopped. There was an awkward pause, the answering thrill of tense amazement shot from mind to mind like lightning. They stood as if frozen, gazing. The room was for a moment so still that I could hear my own quick breathing and the hammering of my heart. I was grateful for some far shout upon the street that drowned the noise.

"But—you—but—I thought—" Milly began in a half-hushed, awe-struck whisper; she never finished the sentence, but continued to gaze at me with big, round eyes, her lips parted, her breath quick and tremulous.

I was transported with joy and fright; I almost wished I might sink into the floor, but just then down the stair came the Judge with John behind him, and little Joy perched on his shoulder. I think the others were as grateful as I for the interruption.

"Put me down! Put me down!" screamed Joy as she saw me sprinkled with sleet. "Mamma, ith that Mithith Thanta Clauth?"

At the welcome laugh that helped to break the ice she ran with a flirt of her short skirts to hide her head against her father's knee.

"Helen!" repeated Mrs. Baker, only half recovering from her stupefaction, "this isn't—why, it can't be you!"

"I—oh, I'm afraid I'm late," I stammered.

Miss Marcia began to unbutton my raincoat, and her kindness somewhat relieved my embarrassment, though I don't know how I managed to respond to the hubbub of greetings, especially when Mr. Hynes, the stranger, was presented.

He had been looking at me more intently than he knew, with dark blue brilliant eyes, and he flushed as he touched my hand, until I was glad to take refuge with Joy, who hovered about, eying me as if she still suspected some ruse on the part of Santa Claus.

"Joy, you know Cousin Nelly?" I said; and at sound of my voice, they all looked again at each other and then at me.

"Why, I can't believe my eyes, though Bake here said you'd altered. Altered!" twittered Aunt Frank. She turned indignantly upon the Judge, who wisely attempted no defense. "I didn't dream—Bake, here, never can tell a story straight. Have you—what is it? Nelly, dear, it's two years since I've seen you; of course you've—grown!"

But no amazement could long curb her hospitable instincts. Her incoherence vanished as she grasped at a practical consideration.

"But let Milly take you up stairs and get your things off," she said with an air as of one who solves problems.

"Are you truly Cothin Nelly?" Joy lisped. "All wight; come thee my twee."

Though she couldn't recognise me as the cousin of a few weeks earlier, the child was eager to claim me as a new friend. So I escaped with her and Milly to the nursery, where I stayed as long as I dared, letting my cheeks cool.

"The twee ith mine and Mamma'th," said Joy; "we're the only oneth young enough to have Christhmath twees, Papa thayth."

"Hoh, guess I'm younger'n Mamma, ain't I?" scoffed my other little cousin who had been sent to inquire into our delay. He is perhaps a dozen years old, is called "Boy" officially, and Timothy, Jr., in the family records, and—like Joy—wasn't in the least afraid of me, after five minutes' acquaintance.

Boy led me down to the others, but dinner was nearly over before I felt at ease. I'm not used to having at my back a statuesque servant—though this one was not too statuesque to be surprised by my appearance almost out of decorum. And I couldn't help knowing that every one wanted to look at me all the time, which was delicious, but embarrassing. I blushed and gave stupid answers when addressed, and even feared that I might show myself at fault in the etiquette of a city table. It was strange to have forks in so many cases where I've always used spoons. And, though of course I knew what the finger bowls were, I wasn't quite sure how to use them.

No one was more puzzled by my appearance than Uncle Timothy himself. As he looked at me—and this he did through most of the meal—certain long gray hairs in his eyebrows seemed to wave up and down, as I had often noticed with the frightened curiosity of a child, like the questioning antennae of an insect.

"And what is the school work now?" he asked when the dessert came. "The last time I had the very real pleasure of seeing you, it was—perhaps animalculae?"

"The cell," I replied, relieved at the introduction of a topic that I could talk about, "and the cell wall. Protoplasmic movements, you know, and unicellular plants and animals. I'd been making sketches that day of the common amoeba of standing water."

"I am not familiar with the—ah—with the amoeba; but doubtless its habits are interesting. And when do the school days end? A young lady looks forward with pleasure, I fancy, to release from—"

"Is the amoeba a—some horrid bug, I suppose?" interrupted Aunt Frank; "and you—er—do things to it in that laboratory? How can you? The very thought of such a place! It makes me shiver!"

"Oh, but you should see it, so clean and bright; the laboratory's simply beautiful!"

"But this is your first winter in the city, and you ought to be enjoying concerts and theatres, meeting people, seeing things."

"Oh, I only keep such hours as I elect, being a post graduate; and I've been to several theatres," I said; "Kitty and I get seats in the top gallery."

"The—the top gallery?"

"At matinees," I hastily explained, "and not—not lately."

And then I felt more confused than ever, for Mr. Hynes was watching me. John was looking at me, too, with that great light in his face that had been there ever since my arrival, when he first saw the opal gleaming on my finger; and I—oh, how could I have hinted that I don't dare go where so many people might look at me? But it's the truth. And though the truth may be inconvenient, it's wonderfully sweet!

After dinner we passed into the big drawing room behind the hall. Joy did some clumsy little dances in her short white frock—she is really too chubby to caper nimbly—and Ethel and Milly played and sang neither well nor ill.

I think they were more afraid of me than I had been of the servants at dinner. They are not very pretty, with their light, wavy hair and pale flower faces, though I'm afraid I set my standard too high now—now that I know what is possible.

I went to the piano myself afterwards and played. Played! It was terrible! Never would I have believed that I could make such a mess of it. I didn't sing until they began trying carols. I didn't mean to do so then, but I chimed in before I thought, when they sang:—

He set a star up in the sky
Full broad and bright and fair.

"That song was taken from the Ormulum," said the Judge; "a poem of the thirteenth century—"

"Nelly! Was that you?" cried Aunt Frank, interrupting.

The music of the new, fresh, vibrant voice had thrilled them all—all except the unconscious Judge—and there they sat, spellbound. But as they shook off the witchery, there was all at once a babble of voices, and before I quite knew what had happened, I was at the piano again, singing "The King in Thule:"

There was a king in Thule
True even to the grave
To whom his mistress, dying,
A golden goblet gave.

Perhaps it wasn't very appropriate to Christmas, but Cadge had drilled me upon it. In the middle of the first stanza I happened to glance up, and noticed that Mr. Hynes was again looking at me with an absorbed, indrawing gaze, colouring with amazed pleasure. It woke in me a flutter of consternation and delight, for he has the sensitive face of a musician; but my presence of mind was gone, and for one horrible instant I thought I was going to break down, and just sat there, gasping and blushing. My heart sank and my voice dwindled to a quavering, unfamiliar whisper. I couldn't remember the words; but then I seized hold of my courage and sang and sang and sang, better than I had ever done before.

I didn't look up again until I had finished; then somehow I got away from the piano, and shyly slipped into a chair near Miss Baker. Of course there was a clamour that I should sing again, but I couldn't. The flaming of my cheeks made me ashamed.

Perhaps some time I shall learn the city way of not seeming to care very much about anything.

Aunt must have had it at her tongue's end all the evening to invite me to come to her; and when she was bidding me good-night she could wait no longer.

"You're living right on Union Square?" she said; "in the same building with—with—"

"A milliner, a dentist, a school for theatrical dancing," I enumerated, laughing happily. I knew that it was I myself, and not my mode of life, that bewildered her.

"But—is it—nice?"

"Better than a boarding-house. Two or three other girls lodge there, the housekeeper is obliging, and the experience—well, at least it's enlightening."

"I wish you'd come here. Why don't you?"

"Oh, could I?" I cried with sudden frankness. "You can't think how glad I'd be! The studio was awfully nice at first, and I've made the best of it, but I know Ma—Mother and Father would be pleased. If it wouldn't be too much trouble—"

And so easily it was all arranged. Of course after she had seen me, heard me, felt the charm of me—of Her—Aunt Frank couldn't leave Her in the studio!

I'd have been glad to avoid the journey back to Union Square with John; for the evening, with all its perplexities, had been paradise, and I dreaded to have him bring me back to earth with words of love. I ought to be more than usually tender towards John now, when he has just lost his mother; but when the Bakers' door had closed behind us, and we stood together under the crispy starlight—for it had cleared and turned cold during the evening—I talked feverishly of things that neither of us cared about, and kept it up all the way home.

John scarcely seemed to listen to my chatter. He was as if under a spell, and his dark, strong face glowed with the magic of it. As we approached the Square, he looked down at me, and slipped my hand from his arm into the clasp of his warm fingers. Through my glove he felt the ring, and gave the hand a little, almost timid pressure.

"Am I doing right? Ought I to wear it?" I cried. "Won't you help me think, just as if you didn't—didn't care? This isn't like last summer. We are different; I am very different. You must have seen to-night, that I am not at all the same girl. I've told you that I can't be certain; I am dazed."

"I shall remember everything—all you told me when I came, and now," he said. "But you are doing right—darling!"

He held my hands when we parted and looked into my eyes, and I saw that his own were shining. His love seemed too deep for any outburst of passion, or else he feared to alarm me; and yet he seemed so sure.

I wish—I wish—oh, I don't know what I wish; I ought not to be bound to any one; but I suppose I love John.

CHAPTER II.

A LOOKING OVER BY THE PACK.

Jan. 2.

If women are not meant to study, Prof. Darmstetter should be pleased with me. Instead of working up my laboratory notebooks, I have sat until midnight, dreaming.

"Go to bed early and get your beauty sleep," says Aunt, but I push open the window and lean upon the sash and let the cold air blow over me. I'd like to dance a thousand miles in the moonlight; I'm so young, and so strong, and such glorious things are coming!

To-morrow I shall have a foretaste of the future; I shall know what other people—not John and my relatives—think of me. Ah, there's only one thing they can think! To-morrow'll be the beginning of the world to me.

To-morrow! To-morrow! Aunt Frank has sent out cards for an "At Home." And it's to-morrow!

Oh, I'm glad I came here! I revel in the new home.

I like the house; it looks so big and solid. I like my cousins—quiet little creatures. They wait upon me, anticipate my smallest wish, and defer to my opinions as if I were a white star queen dropped from the ether; all but Boy, and even he respects me because I can construe Caesar.

I like my Aunt—devoted to clubs and committees, though she's forgotten them now in her eagerness to introduce me. Ah, to-morrow! Blessed to-morrow! And I like Aunt Marcia Baker. I wonder if, when I am older, I too shall be serene and stately, with a face that seems to have outlived sorrow; I can hardly believe now that I shall care to live at all when people's eyes have ceased to follow my beauty. When for me there are no more to-morrows.

I think I shall like Mr. Hynes; he's almost one of the family, for he is betrothed to Milly, and I'm glad—ah, so glad I'm not she! What a life she looks forward to—each day exactly like its fellows; a droning, monotonous existence, keeping house, overseeing the cooking—perhaps doing it herself; for he's only a young lawyer, just starting in life!

But I like his face, so full of impulse and imagination. I believe he's a man who might go far and achieve much. Why should he handicap himself with an early marriage?

It's well enough for Milly; she doesn't understand her limitations. Why, she's almost as eager over to-morrow as if it could mean to her what it does to me; and that is an outlook into a life so glad, so wonderful!

Dear, good Aunt Frank proposed the tea before my trunks were fairly unpacked.

"Won't your Professor give you a holiday from—is it microbes you study?" she inquired. "Sure they're not dangerous?"

"The afternoon tea bacillus is not wholly innocuous," suggested Uncle, pinching her cheek.

It was good to see the loving look that reproved and repaid him.

"Why, Bake," she protested, "tea never hurt anybody."

"Oh, I've time enough," I said; "I have no regular days for going to Prof. Darmstetter, and the other studies—"

It was on my tongue to add: "and the other studies don't matter," but I checked the words.

"Well, you'll find it takes time," Aunt reminded me. "How about clothes, now? Suppose you show me what you brought."

And in a few minutes we were all chattering at once in discussion of my modest little wardrobe. I could feel, as each new dress was shaken from its folds, that Aunt was more dissatisfied than she would confess.

"Everything's pretty and tasteful," she conceded at last; "but—for a tea—if you could—"

If she had dared, she'd have offered to get me a dress herself.

"Oh, of course I'll need something new," I said hurriedly; "I meant to ask your advice. Nothing very costly," I was reluctantly adding. But at that moment an inspiration came to lighten the gloom.

The very thing! I'd use the money I'd saved for the microscope! I don't need one the least bit.

So I was able to add with some philosophy:—

"I never did have a nice dress, and I'd like something pretty good this time. Why, I haven't nearly spent all my allowance," I cried with kindling enthusiasm, jumping up to pace the floor. "Tell me what I ought to have—just exactly what is most suitable. I don't know much about teas, but I'd like something—fine!"

Aunt's face glowed with excitement. I think she saw in imagination fifty Helens dancing before he eyes in a kaleidoscopic assortment of dresses.

"You're right. We'll get—oh, what shall we—what shall we get that'll be good enough for you?" she cried in a flutter. "Something simple of course, you're so young; but—I'll tell you: We'll go right to Mrs. Edgar!"

Perhaps my own face burned, too.

"Who's she? Some one on the Avenue?"

"No; no one knows her, but—she's a marvel! It'd mean the world and all to her to please some one sure to be noticed, like you. She's a widow; has two children."

So to Mrs. Edgar we went. Her eyes devoured me. She is a mite of a woman, young, white-faced, vivacious.

"For a tea?" she asked. "A—a large one?"

She spoke with forced calmness, but her hands had the artist's flutter, the enthusiast's eagerness to be doing.

"I'll get samples," she went on; "there's not a minute to be lost; not—one—moment! I'll work all night rather than fail her. You will not wish"—she dismissed us abruptly—"to go with me to the shops?"

"No; Miss Winship attracts too much attention."

Alas, it's true! It has become an ordeal for me to venture into a shop. But what a blessed thing if my beauty should bring success and ease to this poor, struggling little widow—just by my wearing a dress she has made! Oh, she'll not be the only one! What if Kitty sometime wins fame by painting my picture, or Cadge by writing of me in her "Recollections?" Why shouldn't I inspire great poems and noble deeds and fine songs, like the famous beauties Miss Coleman told about? Yes, even more than they; there was not one of them all like me!

Next evening when Aunt brought the samples upstairs, I was reading to the Judge in the library, and the others were listening as if stocks and bonds were more fascinating than romances.

"Shall we pray for a second Joshua, arresting the sun, pending deliberation?" asked Uncle, displeased at the interruption.

"Why, Bake, there's scarcely ten days, and how we'd feel if Nelly didn't look well!" cried Aunt Frank; and we all broke out laughing at the bare idea of my looking ill!

"I never saw any one to whom dress mattered so little," Aunt Marcia said, as she folded up her silk knitting. "But Mrs. Edgar insists upon her four fittings like any Shylock haggling for his pound of flesh; it is written in the bond."

When she had trotted away home with her prim elderly maid, like a pair out of "Cranford," Ethel made an impressive announcement:—

"The General will pour."

"Returned hero from the Philippines?"

"Oh, dear, no. Meg Van Dam could face Mausers, but a Red Cross bazaar was as near as she got to the war. We call her the General because—oh, you'll find out. Meg is Mrs. Robert Van Dam."

"Oh, I think I've seen that name in the papers. Aren't they grand people?"

"Why, yes; rather; we don't know the Van Dams; Meg's only just married. You might have read about her mother-in-law, Mrs. Marmaduke Van Dam, or her aunt-in-law, Mrs. Henry Van Dam, or Mrs. Henry's daughters; the family's a tribe. But Meg, why, we went to school with Meg; she's just the General."

My dress came home to-night—white and dainty. Ah, at last I've something to wear that's not "good" and "plain" and "durable"! But there was an outcry, as there has been at every fitting, because I won't wear stays. Eccentric, they call me; as if Nature and beauty were abnormal!

When I was arrayed in it, Aunt and Ethel led me to the library for Uncle's inspection.

"Is to-morrow the day set to exhibit to Helen other aspects of New York than the scholastic?" he asked, looking up from his paper. "The first appearances of a young girl in modern society are said to be comparable with a 'Looking Over by the Pack,' as described by Mr. Kipling. May Mrs. Baloo and Mrs. Bagheera and Mrs. Shere Khan have good hunting to-night, and be kind to-morrow to our womanling."

"Why, Bake, you know just as well as I do there aren't any such people coming. I believe it's just one of your jokes," sputtered Aunt. "Nelly, dear, turn slowly round."

She had dropped on her knees beside me, busy with pins and folds, and Joy was lisping the caution, born perhaps of experience, "Don't you thoil it, Cothin Nelly, or Nurthey'll vip you," when Milly came into the library; and with her was Mr. Hynes.

"Lovely! Isn't it, Ned?" cried Milly. "It's for to-morrow."

Mr. Hynes scarcely glanced at the dress, then looked away again, with indifference that somehow hurt me.

"Very pretty," he said languidly. "Classic, isn't it? By the way, Judge, I think you'd be interested—"

And then he began to tell Judge Baker about some horrid auction sale of old books!

I was surprised. I couldn't account for it. To hide my disappointment—for I do want to look my best to-morrow, and then everybody has taken so much pains—-I bent over Joy, tying and untying the ribbons that held the rings of soft hair in front of her ears.

"Thop, Cothin Nelly; you hurt!" she screamed.

As soon as I could, I ran to take off the dress. How could Aunt so parade me? Of course the women Mr. Hynes knows must have all their dresses from city dressmakers.

But I believe, after all, he did notice, for I saw him colour before he turned sharply away. To please Milly, he might at least—

He called the dress classic; it's just long, soft folds without messy trimmings; and, oh, it's not vanity to peep at myself again and again and to dream of to-morrow. I'm gloriously, gloriously beautiful! If John comes to-morrow, I do hope he'll wear gloves. He has good hands, too; well-shaped—

Why, of course; Mr. Hynes must admire me.

CHAPTER III.

SNARLING AT THE COUNCIL ROCK.

Jan. 10.

To-day has been heaven!

There was a famous lawyer among Aunt's guests and a United States Senator and a real author, a woman who has written books; but people brushed past them all for a word with me!

And I'm going to the Opera! I shall sit in a box. Mrs. Van Dam says I'll make the sensation of the season! I'm going to the Opera!

When men came this morning with palms and flowers to decorate the house, I ran off to the Park. I did almost run, really. There was a song at my lips: "Gladdest, oh, gladdest, most beautiful in the world; blessed, most blessed, most beautiful in the world!" and the "tap-tap" of horses' feet on the asphalt, the "b-r-r-r-rp" of the cable cars and the rattle of elevated trains kept time, until all the city seemed ringing with my joy.

I know it's foolish; if I had been beautiful from my childhood; if I could have grown up to think of it as a matter of course; if I had been used to the awe of men and women's envy, I might think less about it, might even fancy that I would have preferred learning or wealth—for we all love what we have not. But now—it is so new, so marvellous!

I had plenty of things to think about when I could calm myself. Only yesterday I'd had a long talk with Prof. Darmstetter.

"The experiment is not yet complete," he declared. He had asked me to stay for—but that is a part of the secret which is to pass with this record from me to all women.

"You are beautiful," he said; "mein Gott, yes! More beautiful t'an any ot'er voman since t'e appearance of man on eart'. But perfectly beautiful? I do not know; I t'ink not yet. Who can tell for v'at ultimate perfection Nature destined t'e human body? But we shall see. T'at perfection you shall reach. In a veek, a mont', t'ree mont's—I cannot tell. Ve must vait and experiment and still vait, but success is assured—absolute success. I shall gif it. I do not know if t'e human type is t'e highest t'at eart' is capable of supporting, but it is t'e highest present type, and it shall be my vork to gif it t'at for v'ich it has hungered and t'irsted, and towards v'ich slowly it has groped its vay; it shall be my vork to gif humanity beauty and perfection."

The light that illumined his yellow, wrinkled face made me cry out:—

"All the world will bless you! All women will be grateful as I am grateful—"

"Ach!" he snapped with a sudden change of countenance. "I shall be von more name and date to make harter t'e student's lessons and longer t'e tables—t'at is gratitude! Vit' t'e vorld we haf at present no concern. For t'is, indeed, you bless me—t'at I am not a quack to make public an incomplete discofery, for ot'er quacks to do mischief. You are glad t'at it is vit' you alone I concern myself. But you are not grateful; you are happy because I say t'at you shall be yet more beautiful; t'at is not gratitude. You might—"

At the eager shrillness of his voice I drew a step away.

"Indeed I'm grateful, whether you believe it or not!" I cried. "You think all women so selfish! Of course I'm glad that I alone am in the secret, but you proposed it yourself, and I rejoice as much as you do that some day—by and by—other women will be happy as I am happy—"

"Yes—by and by! You emphasize t'at," he snapped mockingly, but then he recovered himself and his queer new deference. "And you haf t'e right; I vish you to rechoice in your own lofeliness. Ve haf engaged toget'er in t'is great vork, and it is vell t'at we bot' haf our revards—I t'at I aggomblish somet'ing for t'e benefit of my kind, and you—since vomen cannot lofe t'eir kind, but only intifiduals—you haf t'e happy lofe t'at is necessary to a voman."

His eyes rested on my ring.

I couldn't tell him—proud as I am of it—that John had loved me before I ever heard of the Bacillus. But I could punish his gibes.

"Oh, by the way—I'm not coming to-morrow," I said. "My Aunt is to give a tea."

Strange to see him struggle with his disappointment like a grieving child! But he bravely rallied.

"T'at is goot," he said, "you shall tell me v'at people t'ink of you. You vish to go about—to be admired; you vish to gif up science; not so?"

"Oh, no! I couldn't be a doll, for men to look at and then tire of me. I must study the harder—to be worthy—"

The look of his face, of the thin, straight-lipped mouth, the keen old eyes, stopped me.

"You vill not gif up study now, at least," he sneered; "not until you haf t'e perfect beauty. You haf need of me."

Prof. Darmstetter is so irritating! Why, he has just as much need of me! He himself said I was the best subject he could find for the experiment. But even if he had finished his work with the Bacillus, he'd rather teach me, a despised woman, all the science I could master than develop the budding talent of the brightest Columbia boy. The sight of my beauty is a joy to him. Really, I pity the poor man. He makes the great discovery when he's himself too old to profit by it; the Bacillus will not work against Nature. It has brought him only a hopeless longing—

But I shall study. He shall see! Not in the laboratory, of course; that is hardly fitting now. I wouldn't go there again except for the lure of promised beauty—can more loveliness be possible? But I do feel the responsibility of beauty. The wisest and best will crowd about me, and they must find my words worthy the lips that shape them and the voice that utters. And I shall learn from their wisdom.

"There was Hypatia; she was both beautiful and learned," I found myself confiding to a gray squirrel in the Park, and then I laughed and ran home to make my last preparations.

Ethel arranged my hair to-day, though I could hardly yield her the delight of its shining, long undulations. Then she did Milly's as nearly like mine as possible, and Milly did hers. The girls wore white like me, and my aunt was in black. The house was full of flowers; as if it had plunged into seas of them, it dripped with an odourous rosy foam. John sent a box—the extravagant boy!—and there were big American Beauty roses, with stems as long as walking sticks from Pros. and Cadge. Milly had flowers, too, from Mr. Hynes.

At first I wasn't a bit afraid, while acquaintances were dropping in one by one—Mrs. Magoun, Mrs. Crosby, the wife of the managing clerk in Uncle's office, Aunt Marcia—all allies.

Then there came a stir at the door, the magnetic thrill that foreruns a Somebody. And there upon the threshold stood a tall, dashing girl, superbly turned out; not handsome, but fine-looking, dark, decisive, vital—a creature born to command.

I knew her at the first glance. She was the General!

I was for a moment surprised to see her so young and girlish, though I might have known; for she was Milly's schoolmate. I doubt if she's two years my senior, but in social arts and finesse—ah, the difference!

The house seemed to belong to her from the moment she entered. She moved like a whirlwind—a well-mannered and exquisitely dressed whirlwind, of course—with an air of abounding vigour and vitality, up to where we stood, and there stopped short.

"How d'y'do?" she said, in the clipped New York fashion, looking at me with the confidence of one who is never at a loss—and then—

Oh, the joy! For all her savoir faire, it was her turn to be confused. For a moment she peered at me with a short-sighted squint; then after a little hesitation, she put up her lorgnette, making an impatient gesture, as if to say: "I can't help it; I must"—and stared.

Her eyes grew big as she gazed; but at last she drew a long breath, and put down the quizzing-glass with an effect of self-denial. When she spoke there was little to remind me of her momentary loss of self-command.

"Are you enjoying New York?" she demanded.

"Milly tells me you've never been in the city before; that you are studying at Barnard."

"Yes."

I knew that I had impressed this strong, splendid woman, but I was a little afraid of her.

Quite herself again, she began asking questions about myself, my home, my studies; quick, probing, confusing questions, while in my cheeks the awkward colour came and went. But it would never have occurred to me to parry her queries. I could not help liking her, though when at last she left me and began a progress through the rooms, I drew a breath of relief, like one who has passed with credit a stiff examination.

At the door of the dining-room she paused again, judging through her glass the table and its dainty decorations.

"Those flowers are rather high," she declared, and calling upon Milly for help, she began rearranging the roses, and laying the twigs of holly upon the cloth in bolder patterns. She seemed to take charge, to adopt me with the house, to accept and audit and vouch for us.

Then people began coming all at once, all together, and I had to take my place beside Mrs. Baker and Aunt Marcia in the reception room.

I can't tell anything about the next hour; it's a blur. But I wouldn't have missed a minute. I had never before seen a reception, except at the University where sometimes I used to serve as an usher, pouncing upon people as they entered and leading them up to the row of Professors and Professors' wives backed against the wall. But now I had to stand up myself and meet people. And oh, that was different!

At first two or three women would approach, putting out their hands at an absurd height, and start to say: "How d' you—" or "I'm so—"

And Aunt would make some excited, half-coherent remark and look at me, anxiously but proudly, and say my name.

But they never heard her! As they really saw me, each in turn would start, and, wide-eyed, look again. And as the awe and wonder grew in their faces—as there came the little stop, the gasp, that told how their reserve was for once overthrown, then, to the utmost, I tasted the sweet of power and felt the thrill of ecstasy.

Red spots burned in Aunt's cheeks; she talked fast in her company voice, and somehow the lace at her throat got awry. Aunt Marcia was as calm and stately in her soft black velvet as if nothing were happening. And really there was little to disturb one's composure. New Yorkers aren't like our whole-souled, emotional Western folks. Not one of these women but would have suffered torture rather than betray her surprise beyond that first irrepressible gasp of amazement. After that one victory of human nature, they would make talk about the weather, or the newest book, and then get away to discuss me in undertones in the hall or drawing room.

Quickly the sixth sense of a strange agitation went through the house. I knew what they were all talking about, thinking about. Subtle waves of thought seemed to catch up each new comer so that she felt, without being told, that something extraordinary was happening. Women now approached not unprepared; but for all their bracing against the shock, not one could be quite nonchalant at the first sight of my superb, compelling beauty.

My eyes flashed, my pulse rioted as I felt the vibrant excitement of the gathering, the tiptoe eagerness to reach our neighbourhood, the hush that fell upon the circle immediately around me, the reaction of overgay laugh and chatter in the far corners.

Oh, it was lovely, lovely! No girl could have been quite unmoved to feel that all those soft lights were glowing in her honour, those masses of flowers blooming, all that warmth and perfume of elegance and luxury wafted as incense to her nostrils. And the undercurrent of suppressed excitement, the sensation of Her!

At times I grew impatient of conventionality. How was it possible for these people to look so quietly, eye to eye, upon the most vitally perfect of living beings? How could they turn from me to orange frappé or salted almonds?

Once or twice I caught some faint echo of the talk about us.

"Where is she?" asked one voice, made by curiosity more penetrating than its owner realised.

"Julia's seen her; she's talked and talked till I had to come."

"And she's still studying?"—Another voice—"How can she? Great beauty and great scientist—bizarre combination!"

How that would amuse Prof. Darmstetter!

By and by I saw John towering above the others while he bobbed about helplessly in the sea of women's heads that filled the rooms and even rose upon the "bleachers," as he calls the stairs. There were not really so very many people, but he didn't know how to reach us, he is so awkward. When he had steered his course among the women and had spoken to my Aunt, his face was radiant as he turned to me.

"I knew you wouldn't fail us, Mr. Burke," Aunt said hurriedly. "Mrs. Marshall—so glad—this is—Nelly, dear—"

Behind John was a lady waiting to meet me.

"—So glad you've come," I said to him; and the words sounded curiously to me because in my excitement I also had spoken in my "company voice."

But I had no time to say another word to him, as I turned to greet Mrs. Marshall.

He mumbled something, flushing, while his eyes devoured my beauty in one dumb, worshipping look. Then he dropped quickly out of our group. I was sorry, but he'll understand that I was flurried. He ought to learn self-control, though; he shouldn't look at me before so many people with all his heart in his eyes.

And I was so vexed about his clothes, too! His old, long, black coat, such as lawyers wear in the West, would have been pretty nearly right—something like what the other men wore—but he seemed to think it was not good enough, and had put on a brand new business suit. Of course there wasn't another man there so clad, but he never seemed to notice how absurd he was.

The Viewing of the Pack didn't last long. Before my cheeks had ceased flaming, before I had grown used to standing there to be looked at, people seemed to go, all at once, as suddenly as they had arrived.

Just as the last ones were leaving, some instinct told me that Mr. Hynes had come. Before I saw him, I felt his gaze upon me, a wondering, glad look, as if I were Eve, the first and only woman.

Milly brought him to me and left us together, but at first he was almost curt in his effort to hide his sensibility to my beauty—as if that were a weakness!—and I was furiously shy, and felt somehow that I must hold him at still greater distance.

"Am I never again to hear you sing?" he asked. "Sweet sounds that have given a new definition to music are still vibrating in my memory."

I knew he was thinking of Christmas!

"I don't often sing, except for Joy," I mumbled; "I've had so few lessons."

"Joy doesn't know her joys; but—wouldn't she share them?"

"Sometime—perhaps—"

I couldn't answer him, for hot and cold waves of shyness and pleasure were running over me. Oh, I hope, for Milly's sake, he doesn't dislike me. He seems to feel so intensely, to be so alive!

When he had gone, I went to the dining-room with Aunt Marcia, and found there Ethel and the General and Peggy Van Dam, the General's cousin, a pale girl, all eyes and teeth. Kitty was with them, and she darted towards me, but Mrs. Van Dam was before her.

"Sit down, both of you," she commanded.

She fairly put us into chairs, and brought us cups of something—I don't know what.

Aunt Marcia breathed a little sigh of relief.

"Helen," she said, "you haven't been standing too long?"

"It wasn't an instant! I could stand all day!"

Mrs. Van Dam smiled, and I felt gauche, like a schoolgirl. I am so impulsive!

"It was all delightful!" cried Kitty; "and yet—while you were my chum, Helen, I did think you rather good-looking!"

"You find yourself mistaken?" the General inquired.

"Oh, no-o-o; not exactly; a beautiful girl, certainly; but—oh, I could have made pincushions of some of those pudgy women, nibbling wafers, and delivering themselves of lukewarm appreciations! 'Too tall'—'too short'—'too dark'—'too light'; 'I like your height bettah, my deah.' Helen, you dairymaid, powder! Plaster over that 'essentially improbable' colour."

Mrs. Van Dam broke out laughing at Kitty's mimicry. I wish the child wouldn't let her hair straggle in front of her ears and look so harum-scarum.

"I doubt if we have had many harsh critics," said Miss Baker.

"Not a thing to criticise," cried Aunt Frank, entering just then and catching the last word. "Everybody so interested in Nelly! Bake, if you'd only come earlier, I'd have been perfectly satisfied."

They say that Uncle Timothy can never be coaxed home to one of his wife's receptions, but he answered with great solemnity, as he loomed up behind the little woman:—

"I am privileged to be here, even at the eleventh hour. I could not wholly deny myself the sight of so much youth and bloom."

"Don't be hypocritical, Judge," said the General reprovingly. "You're too big and honest to achieve graceful deceit. But before I go—I've seats for the Opera Monday night in Mother's box. Miss Winship must come, and—" her glance deliberated briefly—"and Milly."

Milly cried, "How delightful, Meg!" But my tongue tripped and my cheeks flamed as I tried to say that I had never seen an opera and to thank my new friend.

Little she heeded my lack of words. Gazing at me once again as she had upon first seeing me, she exclaimed:—

"You great, glorious creature! They sha'n't hive you in a schoolroom; you must come out and show yourself; why, you'll set New York in a furore!"

I think she's splendid.

No sooner was she gone than I was summoned to the reception-room, and Cadge rushed to meet me. She looked much smarter than Kitty, with her black hair curled and her keen eyes shining with excitement.

"All over but the shouting?" she asked. "Meant to get here in season to see you knock 'em in the Old Kent Road, but woman proposes, Big Tom disposes. Shall I turn in a paragraph? Just—did you have music? What's your dress—in the Sunday society slush, of course, not the daily; 'fraid the Star won't take over a stick—. Greek a little bit? M-m-m—not modistic exactly, but—but—."

Her abrupt sentences grew slower, paused, dropped to an awestruck whisper, as she looked upon me. She added in her gravest manner: "Say, you're the loveliest ever happened! The—very—limit!"

But awe and Cadge could not long live together. In a moment her mouth took a comically benevolent quirk.

"And 'among those present'—" she asked; "who was that leaving just as I got here?"

"Mrs. Robert Van Dam, schoolmate of my cousins. But you're not writing me up, Cadge?"

Cadge whistled.

"Van Dam! How calmly the giddy child says it! Does your youngest cousin make mud pies with duchesses? Say, she comes pretty near being one of the '400.' But I'm off; a grist of copy to grind—talk of raving beauties, you'll be the only one that won't rave!"

Of course Cadge wouldn't have talked just like that before the others, if she had come earlier.

At bedtime Milly and Ethel ran to my room to talk things over, and my Aunt came to shoo them off to bed, but she stayed and talked, too; and I've no business to be writing at this shocking time of night, except, of course I couldn't sleep and so I might as well.

"Everybody thinks you resemble your cousins," Aunt said; "and really there is a family likeness."

Poor Aunt! Ethel and Milly are washed out copies of me, in dress and hair, if that constitutes resemblance; and they imitate even my mannerisms.

I should think Mr. Hynes would be too critical to admire Milly.

I had a partial engagement for Monday with John; but he'll let me off, to go to the Opera.

CHAPTER IV.

IN THE INTERESTS OF MUSIC.

Tuesday morning, Jan. 14.

I am writing before breakfast. They told me to lie quietly in bed this morning, but I'm not tired, not excited. Nothing more happened than I might have expected. I couldn't have supposed that in my presence people would be stocks and stones!

But oh, it was beautiful, terrible! How can I write it? If I could only flash last night—every glorious minute of it—upon paper!

And I might have lost it—they didn't want to let me go! There was a full family council beforehand. John had taken quietly enough the cancelling of our half engagement for the evening, but he had strong objections to my going to the Opera.

"If you prefer that—" he said; "but do you think it wise to appear in such a public place with strangers?"

"But why not?"

I was impatient at so much discussion and discretion. My mind was made up.

"There's no reason why you shouldn't, I suppose." John drew a great sigh. "But I shall feel easier if—I think I'll go too."

"We'll all go," cried Aunt Frank—it was so funny to have them sit there debating in that way the problem of Her—"we'll enjoy it of all things—the Judge and I, and especially Ethel."

And so, when the great night came, Milly and I left the others in the midst of their preparations, and went off to dine with Mrs. Van Dam; we were to go with her afterwards to see Mascagni's "Christofero Colombo."

It seems impossible now, but I was excited even about the dinner. I thought it the beginning of recognition—and it was!—to be seized upon by this splendid, masterful young General.

She lives not far from us—on Sixty-seventh Street near Fifth Avenue, while we are on Seventy-second Street near Madison. The wall of her house near the ground looks like that of a fortress; there are no high steps in front, but Milly and I were shown into a hall, oak finished and English, right on the street level; and then into a room off the hall that was English, too—oak and red leather, with branching horns above the mantel and on the floor a big fur rug; and, presently, into a little brocade-lined elevator that took us to Mrs. Van Dam's sitting-room on the third floor.

"You ought to see the whole house," Milly whispered, as we were slowly ascending.

I had eyes just then for nothing but the General herself, who met us, a figure that abashed me, swishing a gleaming evening dress, her neck and hair a-glitter with jewels, more dominant and possessive and—-yes, even more interested in me than when I had first seen her.

When we went down to dinner, I did see the house; for at a word from Milly, partly in good nature and partly in pride, Mrs. Van Dam led the way through stately rooms that kept me alternating between confusion and delight, until she paused in a gilded salon, with stuccoed ceiling and softest of soft rose hangings, where I scarcely dared set foot upon the shining floor.

Less in jest than wonder, I asked if Marie Antoinette didn't walk there o' nights.

"It's Diane, isn't it, who walks here this night?" she said, linking her arm in mine and leading me to a tall mirror. Then she changed colour a little, took her arm away hastily and walked from the great glass. Kind and friendly as she was, she couldn't quite like to see her own image reflected there—beside mine!

"Diane and the Queen of Sheba!" exclaimed Milly, for beside our simple frocks the General was indeed magnificent.

Her brow cleared at this, and she laughed with satisfaction. When I blurted out something about having once run off to a shop parlour, before I came to Aunt, for a peep at a full-length glass, she laughed again at the confession and called me "a buttercup, a perfect Diane."

At dinner we met Mr. Van Dam—a small man who doesn't talk much; and it seemed so exciting to have wine at table, though of course I did not taste it, or coffee.

And it was delightful to lean back in the carriage, as we drove to the Opera House, and remember how Kitty and I used to pin up our skirts under our ulsters and jog about in street cars. Mrs. Van Dam wore a wonderful hooded cloak of lace and fur, and her gloves fastened all the way to her elbows with silk loops that passed over silver balls.

I had been so impatient during dinner, because they didn't sit down until eight o'clock, and then dawdled as if there were no Opera to follow; but I needn't have worried, for although the performance had begun when we arrived, there were still many vacant places in the great house. I drew closer about my face the scarf that Ethel had lent me until we had passed through the dazzling lobby, up the stairway and through the corridors, and until the red curtains of the box had parted, and I had slipped into the least conspicuous chair. Muffled as I was, I trembled at the first glance at the great, brilliantly lighted house, from which rose the stir of a gathering audience and a rustle of low voices.

"Why, you're not nervous, are you?" the General asked. "I've brought you here early on purpose; you'll be comfortably settled before anybody notices."

And she good-naturedly pushed me into a front place. The music was all the while going on, but no one seemed to pay much attention.

"Who'll notice me in this big building?" I asked with a shaky little laugh.

But just at first, as I looked out over the house, I clutched the lace that was still around my throat. It was warm after the chill air without, and my head swam. There was mystery in the swarming figures and the murmur. The breath of the roses that lay over the box rails, the gleaming of bared shoulders, the flash of jewels seemed to belong to some other world—a world where I was native, and from which I had too long been exiled. Surely in some other life I must have had my place among gaily-dressed ladies who smiled and nodded, bending tiara-crowned heads above gently waving fans. I felt kinship with them; I passionately longed to be noticed by them, and feared it even more intensely.

Almost immediately after our arrival the curtain fell upon the first scene. We had missed every word of it! Mrs. Van Dam left me for a few minutes to myself, and as I became more composed, I put back my scarf and looked about a little more boldly. The house was yet far from full, but every moment people were coming in.

The boxes at each side of us were untenanted, but at no great distance I saw Peggy Van Dam, seated beside a large woman—her mother, Mrs. Henry—and chatting busily with a stout, good-natured-looking young man. Even Peggy had not noticed our entrance and, quite reassured, I lifted my opera glass and began studying the audience.

We were near the front of the house in the first tier on the left, and I had in view almost the whole sweep of the great gold and crimson horseshoe. Down in the orchestra some of the women were as gorgeous in satins and brocades as those in the boxes, while others wore street attire. Nearly all the men had donned evening dress, and I thought at first—but soon saw how absurd that was—that I could pick out John by his office suit. I could not repress a little glow of pride, as I looked down upon those rows and rows of heads, to think that somewhere among them, or above them, John was watching, rejoicing with me, fearing for me where for himself he would never fear. He'd lift, if he could, every stone from my path. Mr. Hynes, now, would carry you forward so fast that you'd never see the stones.

I had no thought that Mr. Hynes was in the house, but, amusing myself with the idea, I lifted my glass—dear little pearl trinket with which the General had provided me—and looked for him, wondering how often a poor young lawyer attends the Opera. Of course I couldn't see anybody I knew, nor could I read my libretto, for the words danced before my eyes; and Mrs. Van Dam, smiling at my interest, began chattering about the people around us, speaking as if I would soon be as familiar with the brilliant world of fashion and society as herself.

"I wonder," she said in her energetic way, "what it feels like to be at one's first opera."

Excitement was flashing from my eyes and burning on my cheeks as I answered:—

"It's—it's—oh, I can't tell you! But in the West," I added hastily, "we had oratorio."

"What a buttercup you are!" she said again.

Soon the curtain rose upon the second act—or scene. Whichever it was, that was all that I was fated to see or hear of the Opera. And for the little while I could consider it, I must say I was disappointed. The scenery was superb, but the voices—

"You've spoiled us, Nelly," Milly whispered.

"Colombo's not bad."

I squeezed her hand ecstatically.

I find that I don't criticise men so shrewdly; but oh, the thin, shrill pipe of Isabella, compared with what a woman's voice may be! Yet I admired her skill, and did not wonder that the house applauded.

The second scene was just closing, and I was lost in dreams of the fine things that I shall do for art and music when I'm a great society leader, when the box door opened, and there entered an elderly couple, much alike—tall, thin, rather stately and withered. I knew that they must be Mrs. Marmaduke Van Dam, the General's mother-in-law, and her husband. Impulsively I sprang up to allow them to come to the front places.

And then—the catastrophe!

I was conscious at first only of an instant's confusion, of a hurried introduction in undertones. Then I found myself again sitting, my arm tingling to the clutch of Milly's fingers. In her pale, pretty face her light eyes glowed with a fright that was not all painful.

The blood seemed to flow back to my heart as I realised what I had done. The sudden stir in our box had called attention, and I had been standing in the glare of electric lights overhead and at my feet, my white dress outlined against the blood-red curtains.

"Take this fan," Milly whispered from behind me. "Will you have my seat?"

Shame dyed my face. After such a heedless act I couldn't look at the General. I knew that, in his surprise at my appearance, Mr. Marmaduke Van Dam had fumbled noisily with his chair, and that Mrs. Marmaduke had dropped her shoulder wrap—she was in evening dress; how can elderly women do it?—I knew that in spite of their rigid politeness they found it hard to keep their eyes from me. I hoped the General had been too busy to appreciate my folly, and I drew a quivering breath of relief that it had had no more serious consequences.

Yet I was queerly dissatisfied. The Metropolitan Opera House is a big building, and the part of the audience to which I could have been conspicuous was small. Yet some people must have seen; had they taken no notice?

For some space—minutes or seconds—it seemed so.

Then a confused murmur, a shifting, restless movement, began near us in the orchestra. A good many people down there, as well as in the boxes at each side, had noticed me earlier. Now they began whispering to their neighbours. Heads were turned our way; people were asking, answering, almost pointing. I could see the knowledge of me spread from seat to seat, from row to row, as ripples spread from a stone thrown into still water. Opera glasses were levelled. Comment grew, swelled to a stir of surprise. The curtain had dropped for the interval between scenes; our box became for the moment the centre of interest, and the lights were high. Even the orchestra was resting.

Then it was given me to see how in a great audience Panic may leap without cause from Opportunity.

The stir grew, spread. Fascinated, I gazed down at the disturbance. I knew that a frightened smile still curved my lips. I felt my eyes glow, luminous and dilated. My heart almost stopped beating, gripped by triumph and horror. Afterwards I realised that I had not availed myself of the screen Milly offered; I hadn't lifted the fan to shield my face; I had not stirred to hide myself.

"Bob!" whispered the General. "Quick! Don't you see?"

Robert Van Dam sprang to his feet, offering, as I thought, to exchange places with me. Once more I started up, and chairs were moved to give me passage.

While again I stood under the glare of the lights, and while for the second time the movement in the box drew attention thither, somebody below half rose to look at me. Two or three—a dozen—followed. As I dropped into my seat at the back of the box, and cast the scarf again about my head, twenty, thirty people were struggling out of their chairs.

From my shelter I watched as, farther and farther away, the heads began to turn. From places where I had not been visible I heard the murmur swelling, the scuffle of people rising. I had disappeared from sight, the first to rise had dropped back into their seats as if ashamed, but others increased the uneasy tumult of low, tense sounds.

My brain worked quickly. I understood the shuddering thrill that passed over the audience. It was as if all my life I had seen such vast assemblies, and knew the laws that rule their souls. Even before it came I guessed it was coming; a voice—it was a man's—crying out:—

"What is it? Is it—fire?"

And from away across the house came the answering call—not a question this time, not hesitant, but quick and sharp:—"Fire!"

What should I do? Why was not John or Mr. Hynes there to tell me? Wild thoughts darted through my mind. Should I stand once more? Show myself? Should I cry: "It was I, only I! They were looking at me. There is no fire!"

Crazy, crazy thought! For the thing was over as soon as it began.

Those who had started the confusion and who understood its cause, began shouting:—

"Sit down! Sit down!"

From the topmost gallery a tremendous great voice came bellowing down:—

"What—fool—said—that?"

There was a little laugh, a hiss or two rebuked the disorder; then the baton signalled the orchestra, and the music recommenced, smoothly and in perfect time; the conductor had never turned his head. The curtain went up; the incident was closed.

I drew a long, sighing breath of relief as one, then another, then all together, as if by a single impulse, the people sat down in their places. It had been but an instant. The painted stage, the glittering court ladies, Isabella on her throne, the suppliant Colombo, were as if nothing had happened.

"First-rate orchestra," muttered Robert Van Dam.

The General turned in her chair and looked at me. She did not speak, but I could see that she was excited; it seems to me now that her eyes were very bright, and that her strong, square-chinned face looked curiously satisfied.

"Let's go," I gasped; "I want to go home."

Choking with sobs, though not unhappy, I felt as if I wished to run, to fly; but, as I tottered out of the box, I could scarcely stand. Mr. Van Dam helped me, the General and Milly following. In the corridor we were joined by Peggy and the florid young man whom I had seen with her.

"Why—why, you're not going? You are not going?" Peggy cried. She breathed quickly, and her teeth and eyes alike seemed to twinkle. "Can—can't Mr. Bellmer or I—do something?"

"Nothing at all," said the General in brisk staccato, fastening my wraps with an air of proprietorship; "nobody's in voice to-night, do you think? Miss Winship doesn't care to stay."

Before we reached the lobby, John came from somewhere, hurrying towards us. I was walking between Mr. Bellmer and Robert Van Dam, but with scarcely a look at them he tucked my hand under his arm, just as he would have done in the old days at the State University. At the door Mr. Van Dam looked for a cab.

"I'll take her home," said John grimly.

"I'll go with you; I must see her safe with Mrs. Baker," the General replied, understanding at once. "Mr. Bellmer, tell Mother, please, that Bob and I have gone with Miss Winship. Or—Bob, you won't be needed; you explain to Mother."

The two men hurried away upon their errand, though I fancied they went reluctantly. Peggy had not come down.

All the way home John's brows were black, and he looked straight ahead of him. As we passed under the glow of electric lamps, Milly smiled bravely at me across the carriage, respect and awe mingling with her sympathy. The General sat at my side erect; her eyes glittered, and she looked oddly pleased—not like a woman who had been at the focus of a scene, and had been dragged away from the Opera before it was over, but like a General indeed, planning great campaigns.

As for me, I felt that I must laugh—cry. Did ever such a ridiculous thing, such a wonderful, glorious thing, such a perfectly awful thing, happen to any other girl that ever lived?

I was living the scene again—seeing the mass of heads, the sea of upturned faces. Again I was gazing into the one face that had been distinct, the eyes that had drawn mine in all that blur and confusion, that had looked back at me, as if in answer to my voiceless call for help, with strength and good cheer. Even in the moment of my utmost terror, I had been sustained by that message from Ned Hynes. How did I chance to see him just at that crisis, when I didn't know of his presence? And why didn't he come to us afterwards, as John did?

Mrs. Baker and Ethel saw us leave the box, and were at home with Uncle almost as soon as we.

"Are you safe, Nelly?" Aunt cried, rushing at me; then, with the sharpness of tense nerves, she rebuked the Judge: "Ba-ake, you hissed her!"

"Nay, my dear; in the interests of music, I frowned upon disorder." He added, with waving of his antennae eyebrows: "It was Helen's first opera."

We all laughed hysterically, and then Mrs. Van Dam and John went away.

Could—could Mr. Hynes have gone to the Opera just because he had heard that I would be there?

CHAPTER V.

A PLAGUE OF REPORTERS.

Saturday evening, Jan. 18.

Since Monday I have left the house but once. The Judge has given me a microscope so that I may study at home instead of going to Barnard; and to please him I make a pretence of cutting sections from the plants in Aunt's conservatory; but oh, it's so dull, so dull! Or would be but for my happy thoughts. It isn't interest in apical cell or primary meristem that makes me fret to return to Prof. Darmstetter!

It's all on account of reporters that I am shut up like a state secret or a crown jewel. From daylight until dark, men with pencils and notebooks, cardboard-bearing artists and people with hand cameras have watched the house; and it's so tiresome.

The siege had already begun when Mrs. Baker came to my room the morning after the Opera, but I knew nothing about it. I couldn't understand why she scolded with such vehemence upon finding me writing in this little book instead of lying in bed; why she exclaimed so nervously over my escape and the horrors of jumping from windows, or sliding down ropes, or of being hurried along in fire panics until I was crushed to death.

"Why, you talk as if there had been a fire," I cried, kissing her.

Millions of fires have flamed and roared and sunk and died again; but never before has there been a Me!

The dear fussy little woman said that John had been telephoning inquiries. I could see that she wished to keep me in my room, and finally, at some laboured excuse for withholding the morning papers, I understood that she and John were hiding something; she is so transparent!

"You must be calm, Nelly, dear; you mustn't excite yourself," she chirped anxiously.

"Unless I see the papers, I shall have a fever, a high fever," I threatened; "I must—oh, I must see every word about last evening!"

At last the Record and the Messenger came upstairs already opened to the critiques of the new opera. Mrs. Baker wished to read aloud, but I almost snatched the papers from her; my eyes couldn't go fast enough down the columns. But in neither sheet did I find more than a reference to a "senseless alarm" that marred the rendition of "Christofero."

My cheeks flamed with annoyance. It was the reporters who were senseless; they had seen men adoring the wonder of this century, and had not flashed news of it—of me—to all the world!

Aunt couldn't understand. She thought to comfort me by saying that my share in the disturbance would never be suspected; she unblushingly averred that no one had seen me; she begged me to rest, to forget my fright, not to be distressed by the newspapers.

Distressed? Not I! Events had been too startling for me to heed the stupidity that whined over missing a few bars of a silly overture when I was in sight. Indeed I had been frightened; yet why should not the world demand to look upon me? I thought only of hurrying to Prof. Darmstetter that he might share my triumph. But Aunt wouldn't hear of my leaving the house; scarcely of my coming down stairs. Fluttering into my room she would bring me some fruit, a novel; then she would trot away again with an air of preoccupation.

I was getting out of patience at all this mystery, when, during one of her brief absences, Ethel tapped at my door, and a minute later Kitty Reid dashed at me, while in the doorway appeared Cadge, scratching with one hand in a black bag.

"Oh, Helen, Helen," cried Kitty, laughing and half crying, "have you seen Cadge's exclusive?"

"Cadge! You were there? Cadge!"

"Sure," said that strange creature, her keen eyes glancing about my room; "you don't deserve half I've done for you—not letting me know beforehand—."

"Or me!" Kitty broke in. "Oh, I've have given a—a tube of chrome yellow to see you!"

"—but we've made the Row look like nineteen cents in a country where they don't use money. See you've got the fossils." Cadge nodded towards the papers I had been reading. "But the Star's worth the whole—now where the mischief—"

"Cadge! Show me!"

From the black bag she drew several sheets of paper, upon each of which was pasted a cutting from a newspaper, with pencilled notes in the margin; a handkerchief, a bunch of keys, six pointed pencils, a pen-knife, a purse, rather lean, a photograph of two kittens.

"There," she said, relieved at sight of these, "knew I couldn't have lost 'em. Brooklyn woman left 'em $5,000 in her will. They'll stand me in a good little old half column. Now—where—ah, here you are!"

She unfolded a Star clipping and proudly spread it upon my knee.

"There, Princess! That's the real thing!"

I caught my breath at the staring headlines.

BEAUTY OF A WOMAN THREATENS A PANIC AT THE OPERA HOUSE.

PRESENCE OF MISS HELEN WINSHIP CREATES SENSATION THAT MIGHT HAVE RESULTED IN A PERILOUS STAMPEDE.

Alarm of Fire During the Third Scene of "Christofero Colombo"

GREAT AUDIENCE AT THE METROPOLITAN ENDANGERED BY FRENZY OVER REMARKABLY LOVELY GIRL.

"Hot stuff, ain't it?" said Cadge, beaming with satisfaction. "I never like that Opera assignment—dresses and society, second fiddle to the music man—but I wouldn't have missed last night! Minute I saw you in the Van Dam box I knew there'd be the biggest circus I ever—why—why, Helen—"

The horror of it—the pitiful vulgarity! My father, the University folks—all the world would know that I had been made notorious by a—that I—oh, the tingling joy, the rapture—that I was the loveliest of women!

"Cadge! Oh, Cadge!"

I threw myself into her arms.

"Why, Helen, what's this? Can't stand for the headlines? Built in the office and I know they're rather—"

"They're quite" interrupted Kitty. "Of course the Princess wouldn't expect a first page scare. But cheer up, child; there's worse to come."

The girls were soothing me and fussing over me when Aunt Frank opened the door. At her surprised look I brushed away my tears of joy. I understood everything now—her uneasiness, the long telephonic conferences, my confinement to the house.

"Aunt," I managed to say, "here is Kitty come to condole with me and congratulate me; and this is my friend, Miss Bryant of the Star. You remember? She was here at the tea."

"A reporter!"

"Oh, I had to know! Don't worry. Cadge, dear, did nobody but you see me?"

"The fossils never have anything they can't clip," said Cadge in the tone of absorption that her work always commands. "I'm surprised myself at the Echo, though it did notice that a 'Miss Winslow' fainted in the Van Dam box. But haven't you had reporters here—regiments? Expected to find you ordering Gatlings for the siege."

"We're bombarded!" said Aunt. "With—er—"

"Rapid fire questions," suggested Ethel.

"—but the servants have their orders. Of course," Aunt added uneasily, "we're glad to see any friend of Nelly's."

"Oh, by the way, I'm interviewing you," Cadge announced; Star wants to follow up its beat. You haven't talked?"

"Why, no; but—do I have to be interviewed?"

Just at first the idea was a shock, I must confess.

"Do you have to be interviewed? Wish all interviewees were as meek. Why, of course, Helen, you'll want to make a statement. I 'phoned the Star photographer to meet me here, but he's failed to connect. However, Kitty can sketch—"

"Oh, Miss Bryant!" wailed Aunt. "An interview! How frightful! Can't you let her off?"

"Why, I don't exactly see how—though I might—" Cadge deliberated, studying Aunt's face rather than mine, "—might wait and see the red extras. I know how she feels, Mrs. Baker—they're always that way, at first—and I'm anxious to spare her, but—I can't let the Star be beaten. If I were you—"

She turned to me, hesitated a moment, then burst out impulsively:—

"If I were you, I wouldn't say a word! Not—one—blessed—word! I'd pique curiosity. There! That is treason! Why, I'd give my eye teeth, 'most, for a nice signed statement. But I'll wait—that is, if you really, honest-Injun, prefer."

"You're very kind," said Aunt Frank, with a sigh of bewildered relief. "We'd give anything, of course—anything!—to avoid—"

"Mind," Cadge admonished me as she rose to go. "I'm running big risks, letting you off; the office relied on me. If you do talk to anybody else, or even see anybody, you'll let me know, quick? And if you don't want to give up, look out for a little fat girl with blue eyes and a baby stare; she'll be here sure, crying for pictures; generally gets 'em, first time, too. Snuffles and dabs her eyes and says: 'If I go back without any photograph, I'll lose my j-o-o-o-b! Wa-a-a-h! Wa-a-a-h! until you do anything to get rid of her. Ought to be on the stage; tears in her voice. I wouldn't do stunts like that, if I never—you will look out, won't you?"

Aunt is so funny, not to have guessed who wrote the Star article. But she never saw it. Her precautions had all been taken at John's officious suggestion over the telephone. Busybody! An interview is nothing so terrible. The world has a right to know about me; and I don't suppose Aunt had an idea how grievously Cadge was disappointed.

No sooner had Cadge left us than Mr. Bellmer, pink and stammering in my presence, and after him the General, called to inquire for me.

It was wonderful to see the change in the strong, self-confident girl's manner. She beamed at my appearance, and her every word was caressing and deferential. The night before had had a magical effect. I was no longer "Diane," the ingenue whom she patronized as well as admired. I was a powerful woman, a great lady.

"Did our Princess enjoy waking this morning to find herself famous?" she asked, echoing Milly's word for me; and then, to Mrs. Baker's horror, she, too, had a tale to tell about reporters; they had been besetting her for information about her companion of the Opera.

"But I never see people of that sort, you know," she said, with an accent that piqued me, though I couldn't help feeling glad that Cadge had gone.

She showered me with messages from Mrs. Marmaduke Van Dam and from Peggy and Mrs. Henry. She had a dozen plans for my entertainment, but Mrs. Baker opposed a flurried negative:—

"We'll run no more risks like last night's; Nelly must stay at home—till folks get used to her."

"Then I can never go anywhere; never!" I cried in despair, yet laughing. It's impossible sometimes not to laugh at Aunt. But Mrs. Van Dam gave me a look that promised many things.

"You won't be left in hiding after such a début; you'll electrify society!" she said; and when she had gone, I wore away the day wondering what she meant, until I could send for the afternoon papers.

I laughed until I cried when they came, and cried until I laughed. The red extras reviewed the occurrence at the Opera from Alpha to Omega, publishing "statements" from ushers who had shown us to our box; from people in the audience and from the cab man who drove us home. And they supplemented their accounts with pen and ink sketches of "Miss Helen Winship at the Opera," evolved from the fallible inner consciousness of "hurry-up artists."

When Uncle came home, he found me reading an interview with him which contained the momentous information that he would say nothing.

"We shall not again forget," he said with a deep sigh of relief, "that

—the face that launched a thousand ships
And burned the topless towers of Ilion

—was Helen's. But the Metropolitan still stands. An argument not used on heart-hardened Pharaoh was a plague of press representatives."

I'm afraid he'd had a trying day.

The worst of my day was still to come.

After dinner, when I happened to be alone a minute in the library, Mr. Hynes came in. Oddly enough I'd been thinking about him. I had determined that the next time he called I would for once be self-possessed; I would act as if I had not seen how oddly he conducts himself—now gazing at me as if he would travel round the earth to feast his eyes upon my beauty and now actually shunning Milly's cousin. I was quite resolved to begin afresh and treat him just as cordially as I would any other man:

But the moment he appeared away flew all my wits.

"I think Milly'll be here in a minute," I stammered, and then I stopped, tongue-tied and blushing.

He came towards me, saying abruptly: "May I tell you what I thought when I saw you above us—" I didn't need to ask when or where. "—I thought: The Queen has come to her coronation."

One's own stupid self is so perverse! Of course I meant to thank him for his silent help the night before, but I asked with a rush of nervous confusion:—

"You—were you there?"

I could have suffered torture sooner than own that I had seen him.

"Were you there, Ned?" repeated Milly, blundering into the room. "Why, we didn't see you."

Of all vexatious interruptions! Behind her came John and most of the family.

"The servant of The Presence would fain know if The Presence is well," John said, coming quickly to my side and peering down at me with a dark, worn look upon his face, as if he hadn't slept, and a catch in his voice that irritated me, in spite of his playful words. I knew well enough that his anxiety had been on my account, but it was so unnecessary!

"The child bears up wonderfully," cried my Aunt, before I could answer; "but to-morrow'll tell the story; to-morrow she'll feel the strain."

Then they all broke out talking at once. John drew a big chair for me to the fire, and there was such an ado, adjusting lights and fending me with screens.

"You are well?" John asked, obstinately planting himself between me and the others.

"Perfectly. How absurd you are!"

It was so ridiculous that I should be coddled after the triumph of my life, as if something awful had happened to me.

I had felt annoyed all day, so far as anything can now annoy me, by John's too solicitous guardianship, and it vexed me anew when he began to pile up cautions against this and against that—to warn me against going out alone upon the street, and to urge care even in my intercourse with Cadge. He is quicker than my Aunt; he divined the source of the Star article, and he almost forbade me to cleave to such an indiscreet friend.

"Oh, last night won't happen again," I said carelessly; "and you don't know Cadge; she's as good as the wheat."

I wasn't listening to him. I was twisting his ring impatiently on my finger and watching in the play of the fire a vision of the great Opera House, the lights, the jewels, the perfumes, the white, wondering faces.

"Can't you see, Nelly," replied John, with irritation, "that this Bryant woman's article practically accuses you of risking lives to gratify a whim of vanity?"

"Why, John Burke, how can you say such a thing?" exclaimed Aunt Frank, overhearing his words and as usual answering only the last half dozen. "Risking lives! Poor Nelly!"

"I didn't say it," John patiently explained; "but other people—"

"Nobody else will talk about Nelly's vanity. Why, she hasn't a particle. As for the papers, I won't have one in the house—"

"Except the Evening Post?" suggested Aunt Marcia.

"Which Cadge says isn't a newspaper," I contributed.

"—so we needn't care what they say."

I was ready to laugh at John's discomfiture, but the possible truth of his words struck me, and I cried out:

"People won't really believe I did it on purpose, whatever the papers say—that I went there just to be looked at! Oh, that would be horrible! Horrible!"

"Of course not," John said with curt inconsistency to bring me comfort; but I had a reply more sincere—a fleeting glance only, but it said: "The Queen can do no wrong."

"Oh, I hope you are right; I hope no one thought that," I said confusedly in answer to the glance. And then I bent over the Caesar that Boy laid upon my lap, while Uncle asked:—

"Well, my son, is there mutiny again in the camp of our Great and Good Friend, Divitiacus the Aeduan?"

A few minutes later John said good-night with a ludicrous expression of pained, absent-minded patience. I didn't go to the door with him; I scarcely looked up from Boy's ablative absolutes.

Oh I treated him shabbily. And yet—why did he use every effort that day to keep me ignorant of my own rightful affairs, only to come at me himself with a club, gibbering of newspapers?

Why, John's absurd! He would have liked to find me—not ill, of course, but overcome by the Opera experience, dependent on him, ready to be shielded, hidden, petted, comforted. He can not see me as I am—a strong, splendid woman, ready to accept the responsibilities of my beauty.

CHAPTER VI.

LOVE IS NOTHING!

Monday, Jan. 20.

Dear me! Beauty is a responsibility! Such troubles, such trials about nothing! It's photographs this time!

Last Wednesday—the day after the papers published so much about me—a strange man called in Mrs. Baker's absence and begged me to let him take my photograph—as a service to Art. If Aunt had been at home I wouldn't have been permitted to see him. But the man was pleasant and gentlemanly, and so sincere in his admiration that he won the way to my heart. I'm afraid devotion is still so new to me that it's the surest road to my good graces. He hesitated and stammered, blinking before my shining loveliness as if blinded, as he offered to take the pictures for nothing, if he might exhibit them afterwards; and at last I went to his studio, though I said that his work must be for me only, and that I must pay for it.

I wonder at myself for yielding, for I didn't mean to have any photographs until the experiment was quite finished—to mortify me in future with their record of imperfection; but I'm so nearly perfect now that, really, it's time I had something to tell me how I do look. Of course, as fast as I can lay hands on them, I'm destroying every likeness of the old Nelly. At the studio it was such a revelation—the care and intelligence the man displayed, the skill of the posing—that when I got home full of the subject and found Cadge waiting, I had to tell her all about it.

"H'm!" she said after I had finished; "what sort of looking chap?"

When I had described him, she sat silent at least a third of a minute, establishing for herself a new record. Then she said:—

"Princess, I'll have to take back every word I said yesterday about letting you off from being interviewed. I agreed to wait, but it's up to you. Every rag in town'll have some kind of feature about you next Sunday, and you wouldn't ask me to see the Star beaten? You'd better come right now to the Star photographer, or—see last night's papers?—you'll wish you'd never been born. I tell you the situation's out of my control."

"Well, come on then, before Aunt Frank gets back."

So we started out again. The sun and air made me so drunken with pure joy of living that I didn't mind the scolding sure to follow—though it certainly has proved an annoyance ever since to have Aunt's fidgetty oversight of me redoubled, and to be shut up, as I have been, closer than ever, like a Princess in a fairy book, just as my splendid triumphs were beginning.

Worst of all, almost, Mrs. Baker told the tale of my misdeeds to John.

"Why, Helen," he said at once, "no photographer of standing goes about soliciting patronage; the man who came here wants pictures of you to sell."

"Like the great ladies' photographs in England?" I asked flippantly, though I was really a little disturbed.

"Just what I told her!" groaned Aunt Frank. "Bake must see the man; or—Mr. Burke, why can't you find out about him? Perhaps it's all right," she added weakly; "from her accounts he didn't flatter Nelly one bit; simply raved over her."

"Yes, I'll run in and converse with the art lover," John grimly agreed; but just then in came Milly with the General, and the subject was changed.

Indeed, though I don't know just how she managed it, from the moment the brilliant woman of the world entered the room, poor clumsy John was made to seem clumsier than ever, and before long, without quite knowing why, he went away. I'm pretty sure that Mrs. Van Dam dislikes to see us together.

John was wrong and yet not wrong about the photographer; his threatened interposition came to nothing, for the very next morning—only yesterday, long ago as it seems—I was enlightened as to the cheap and silly trick that had been played upon me.

"Thee, Cothin Nelly; pwetty, pwetty!" cried Joy, running towards me and holding up a huge poster picture from the Sunday Echo.

"Isn't it—why—give it to me!" I almost snatched the sheet from her baby hands.

My portrait! I knew it in spite of crude colour and cheap paper. It was my portrait, and it was labelled: "HELEN WINSHIP, MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD. POSED BY MISS WINSHIP ESPECIALLY FOR—"

And then—the insolence of the man!—there followed the name of the bashful stranger whose devotion to Art had drawn him to my door! The fellow had practised upon my credulity to obtain my likeness for publication.

I threw down the sheet, quivering with anger. I felt that I should never again dare look at a paper; but half an hour later I sent Boy out to buy them all, and, locked into my room, I shook all about me a snowstorm of bulky supplements and magazines.

Having posed for Cadge, I knew, of course, that the Star would print my picture, perhaps several of them. But at any other time I should have been overcome to find a "special section" of four pages filled with half-tone likenesses of me, cemented together by an essay on "Beauty," signed by a novelist of repute, and by articles from painters, sculptors, dressmakers and gymnasts, all from their respective standpoints extolling my perfections. Cadge had written an interview headed "How It Feels to be Beautiful."

But the Echo! Besides the poster which Joy had shown me, it published two pages of portraits framed in medallion miniatures of celebrated beauties with whom it compared me, making me surpass the loveliest women of history and legend, from Helen of Troy to the reigning music hall performer. And, with a shock of surprise, I not only saw in the pictures the dress I had worn and the theatrical things the deferential artist had loaned me to pose in, but in the article appeared every word I had said to him; and the skill with which fact, fiction, clever conjecture and picturesque description had been stirred into the sweetened batter that Cadge calls a "first-rate delirious yellow style" was maddening.

This is the beginning of the stuff:—

CHAPTER I.

A PRAIRIE BUD.

So fair that, had you Beauty's picture took,
It must like her or not like Beauty look.
—ALEYN'S HENRY VII.

A Western Wild Rose!

As sweet! As perfect!

By all who have seen her, Helen Winship is pronounced the most beautiful of women.

Last Monday night, at the Opera House, a great audience paid her such spontaneous tribute as never before was offered human being.

At the sight of a young girl, trembling and blushing, staid citizens were lifted to their feet by an irresistible wave of enthusiasm.

Not for anything this girl has done, though Science will hear from her; not for her voice, though no nightingale sings so melodiously; but for a face more glorious than that other Helen's, "Whose beauty summoned Greece to arms and drew a thousand ships to Tenedos."

This modern Helen is a niece of Judge Timothy Baker, at whose residence, No. — East Seventy-second Street, she is staying.

The Judge and his family are reticent concerning their lovely guest, of whom the Echo presents the first authentic picture.

Miss Winship cannot be described.

Artists say that by their stern canons she is a perfect woman. Her beauty is that of flawless health and a hitherto unknown physical perfection.

She is cast in Goddess mould. The loose, flowing robe of her daily wear is of classic grace and dignity.

Tall as the Venus of Milo, she incarnates that noble figure with a lightness and a purity virginal and modern.

She is neither blonde nor brunette; of a type essentially American, she has glorious eyes and for her smile a man would lose his head.

It is a fact for students of heredity and environment to consider that Miss Winship is not a product of the cities. Jasper M. Winship, her father, is a bonanza farmer. Mrs. Winship was in her youth the belle of prairie dances, and still has remarkable beauty.

Born of pioneer stock, baby Helen was reared to a life of freedom; learning what she knew of grandeur from the sky and of luxury from the lap of Mother Earth. Child of the sunshine and sweet air, she danced with the butterflies, as innocent as they of cramping clothing that would distort her body, or of city conventionalities that might warp her mind.

Year by year she grew, a brown-faced cherub, strong-limbed and supple. Springtime after springtime her marvellous beauty budded, unnoted save by the passing traveller, who put aside the bright, wind-blown hair to gaze long into her fathomless eyes.

Roystering farm-hands checked their drunken songs at the little maid's approach, but no wild thing feared her. Birds and squirrels came at her call and fed from her hand.

And so it went. Chapters II and III described with brilliant inaccuracy my University life and made me a piquant mixture of devotee of science and favourite of fashion. Ah, well, it was all as accurate as Pa's name or Mother's beauty or her love of dancing—she thinks it's as wicked as playing cards.

Before I had read half the papers, between dread of Father and John and the absurdity of it all, I was in a gale of tears and laughter. More than once Milly crept to the door, or I heard in the hall the uneven step of lame little Ethel. But I wouldn't open. I was swept by a passion of——

Not grief, not anger, not concern, not fear of anything on earth; but—Joy!

Joy in my beauty, about which a million men and women had that morning read for the first time! Joy in the fame of my beauty which should last forever! Joy in my full and rapturous life!

What did I care for the spelling of a name or the bald prose about my college course? What concern was it of mine how my photographs had been obtained? Trifles; trifles all! Here were the essential facts set broadly forth, speeding to every part of the country—why, to every part of the world! Cadge or Pros. Reid now—any one who knows how such things are done—might note the hours as they passed, and say: "Now two millions have seen her beauty, have read of her; now three; now five; now ten millions."

And the story would spread! In ever widening circles, men warned by telegraph of the new wonder would tear open the damp sheets; and pen and pencil and printing press would hurry to reproduce those marvellous lines—to-morrow in Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Montreal; next day in Chicago, St. Louis, Atlanta; and so on to Denver, Galveston and the Golden Gate.

The picture—mine;—my picture!—would be spread on tables in the low cabins of pilot boats and fishing smacks; it would be nailed to the log walls of Klondike mining huts; soldiers in the steaming trenches around Manila would pass the torn sheets from hand to hand, and for a moment forget their sweethearts while they read of me.

And the ships! The swiftest of them all would carry these pages to London, Paris, Vienna, there to be multiplied a thousand fold and sent out again in many tongues. Blue-eyed Gretchen, Giuseppina, with her bare locks and rainbow-barred apron, slant-eyed O Mimosa San, all in good time would dream over the fair face on the heralding page; women shut in the zenanas of the unchanging East would gossip from housetop to housetop of the wonderful Feringhe beauty; whipped slaves in midmost Africa would carry my picture in their packs into regions where white men have never trod, and dying whalers in the far North would look at my face and forget for a little while their dooming ice floes.

The wealth of all the earth was at my command. Railroad train and ocean grayhound, stage and pony cart, spurring horseman and naked brown runner sweating through jungle paths under his mail bags, would bear the news of me East and West, until they met in the antipodes and put a girdle of my loveliness right round the world!

Never before had I realised what a great thing a newspaper is!

My heart was beating with a terrible joy. And so—prosaic detail—I threw the papers down in a heap on the floor, combed my hair in a great loose knot, put a rose at my belt, and went down to smile at my Aunt's anxieties. I even went with my cousins to supper with Aunt Marcia. And in the early evening Mr. Hynes came to walk with us home. I knew his step, and my heart jumped with fright. What would he, so fastidious as he was, think of that poster?

But his look leaped to mine as he entered, and I—oh, it seemed as if there had never been such a night; never the snow, the delight of the cold and dark and the far, wise stars! I couldn't tell what joy elf possessed me as we walked homeward. I wanted to run like a child. Yet I couldn't bear to reach the house.

"Why, Helen," said Ethel; "you're not wearing your veil."

"Will the reporters git me ef I don't—watch—out?" I laughed. How could I muffle myself like a grandmother?

"We'll keep away the goblins," he said; and—it's a little thing to write down—he walked beside me instead of Milly. We would pass through the shadows of the trees, and then under the glare of an electric lamp, and then again into blackness; and I felt in his quickened breath an instant response to my mood; as if newspapers had never existed, and we were playing at goblins.

I hope he didn't think me childish.

Of course John had come before we reached home, and of course he had been all day fuming over the papers, as if that would do any good; but I had drunk too deep of the intoxicating air to be disturbed by his surprised look when Mr. Hynes and I entered the library; can't I go without his guarding even to Aunt Marcia's?

I like the library—bookshelves, not too high, all about it, and the glow of the open fire and the smiling faces. Sometimes I grow impatient of Aunt's fussy kindness, and of the slavish worship of limp and characterless Milly and Ethel; but last night I was glad to be walled about with cousins, barricaded from the big, curious world. I could have hugged Boy, who lay curled on the hearth, deep in the adventures of Mowgli and the Wolf Brethren. I did hug little Joy, who climbed into my lap, lisping, as she does every night: "Thing, Cothin Nelly."

I looked shyly at Mr. Hynes, who had stooped to pat the cat that purred against his leg, muttering something about a "fine animal." I knew—I begin to understand him so well—just how he felt the charm of everything.

"Thing," Joy insisted, putting up a baby hand until it touched my cheek and twined itself in my hair, "Thing, Cothin Nelly." And I crooned while breathlessly all in the room listened:—

"Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the Western sea—

"He'll be a bad man, won't he, Joy," I broke off, as John came to my corner, "if he scolds a poor girl who has had to stand on the floor all day for the scholars to look at, and get no good mark on her deportment card?"

"I am no longer a schoolmaster, Nelly," said John so icily that Aunt looked up at him, surprised. "Come, Joy," she said, "Cousin Nelly can't be troubled with a great big girl. Why, Mr. Burke, she's cried herself ill, fairly, over those dreadful newspapers. I do so hope they'll leave her in peace now. But of course we tell her it's all meant as a tribute."

"Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon and blow— Blow him again to me, While my little Joy, while my pretty Joy sleeps."

"Thing more about your little Joy! More about me."

The sleepy child cuddled closer and, as I continued to sing, I knew that at least one person in the room understood that a creature so blessed as I could never cry herself ill.

"Father will come to his babe in the nest, Silver sails all out of the West—"

"Milly and I have tributes, too," laughed Ethel. "The Trumpet says we're just as charming girls as our wonderful cousin. And the Record prints snapshots at Joy and her nursemaid. Aren't newspapers funny?"

"Some one of us should be running for office," said Uncle Timothy. "It seems gratuitous to subject an unambitious private family to the treatment expected by a candidate or a multi-millionaire. Yet I have seldom had occasion to complain of the press. In its own perhaps headlong manner, it pursues such matters as are of greatest public importance. A household, to avoid its attentions, should be provided with good, plain, durable countenances. The difficulty with this family is its excess of attraction."

He patted Aunt's hand affectionately, while I sang:—

"—Under the silver moon Sleep, my little Joy, sleep, my pretty Joy, sleep—"

"—but, Uncle, what shall I do?"

"Nothing. In a shorter time than now seems possible, another topic will supersede you. Then, as one of our Presidents has aptly said, you will sink into 'innocuous desuetude.'"

But of course I sha'n't!

As I rose to carry Joy to her bed, I felt from all in the room a look that said I was like a great, glorious Madonna, and I bent lower over the sleeping child's still face; it is good to have everybody admire me.

Oh, I do wish John were more reasonable. Not satisfied with seeing me Saturday and yesterday, he came again to-day and asked me to marry him at once. He's so ridiculous!

"Perhaps I'm selfish to wish to mould your brilliant life to my plodding one," he said wistfully, as if he were reading my thoughts. "But I don't mean to be selfish. I love you—and—you're drifting away from me."

"What a goose you are, John!" I said, laughing impatiently. "I'm just the same that I always was; the trouble is, I'm not a bit sentimental."

John is selfish. He'd hide me somewhere outside the city, he'd bury alive the most lovely of women. He prosed to me about a "home"; as if I could now endure a Darby and Joan existence!

To-night his ring distracts—torments me. I pull it off and put it back and it galls my finger, as if it rubbed a wound. I used to go to sleep with it against my lips—I love the opal, gem of the beautiful women. I wonder if it's really unlucky.

I suppose John's talk to-day annoyed me because I'm in such a restless mood—waiting for the barriers to fall, for the glorious life ahead of me to open. How could he expect me to feel as in the days when we were boy and girl, when we dreamed foolish dreams about each other, and were romantic, and young? I have changed since then, I have a thousand things to think about in which he doesn't sympathize; if I answered his words at random it was because I couldn't fix my mind upon them. I drew a long breath when he left me—when I escaped the tender, perplexed question of his eyes.

It's true; I'm not a bit sentimental. I used to think I was, but now I feel sure that I could never love any one as John loves me.

But I mustn't drift away from him. I remember so many things that tie us together, here in this strange, stormy city. What happy times we used to have! He'll understand better by and by, and be less exacting.

But I can't marry; I must be free to enjoy the victories of my beauty; I told him at Christmas that I can't marry for a long, long time.

CHAPTER VII.

LOVE is ALL!

Thursday, Jan. 30.

I've been trying to read, but I can't. Pale heroines in books are so dull!

Last night came the Van Dams' dance and my triumph—and a greater triumph still; for to-day I have a wonderful, beautiful chapter to add to my own book, to the story of the only woman whose life is worth while.

I see the vista of my future, and—ah, little book, my eyes are dazzled! A rich woman would be a beggar, a clever woman a fool, an empress would leave her throne to exchange with me. Nothing, nothing is impossible to the most beautiful woman that ever lived, whose life is crowned by love. Love is all; all! In a palace without Ned I'd weep myself blind; with him a desert would be Eden. Love is all!

That blessed dance!

The General invited me ten days ago, the afternoon when—when John Burke— poor John!—-scolded me about the photographs.

"Just a 'small and early,'" she said, broaching her errand as soon as she had fairly driven John off the field—there was just the faintest suggestion of relief in her tone—"Peggy's mother's giving it—Mrs. Henry Van Dam."

She looked at Aunt with an assurance as calm as if there were no interdict upon social experiments.

"Impossible!" gasped Aunt, glancing despairingly in the direction in which her ally had disappeared. "Why, Nelly doesn't leave the house; I've stopped her attendance even at Barnard."

"And quite right; but a private house isn't a big school, nor yet the Opera. Of course you say yes, don't you, Helen?"

"Yes, yes! A dance! Oh, I'm going to a dance! Play for me, Milly; play for me!"

Humming a bar of a waltz, I caught Aunt Frank in my arms, and whirled her about the room until she begged for mercy.

"Oh, you dear people, I'm so happy!" I cried as I stopped, my cheeks glowing, and, falling all about me, a flood of glistening hair; while the General, whose creed is to wonder at nothing, gazed at me in delighted amazement.

"You splen—did creature!" she cried.

"I—I would like to go; Aunt Frank, you will let me?" I said meekly, as too late I realised how differently a New York girl bien élevée would have received the invitation. But, indeed, my heart jumped with rapture.

Without John, Mrs. Baker really didn't know how to refuse me.

"But—but—but—" she stammered.

"Surround her with a bodyguard, if you like," said the General. "You'll have Judge Baker and Hynes, of course; and that—what's the name of that shy young man who's just gone? He looks presentable."

"But—but—" protested Aunt; "Bake'd never go; and—Nelly—has—do you suppose Mr. Burke has evening clothes?"

"Naturally," I said with nonchalance, though my quick temper was fired. I was as sure he hadn't as I was that Mrs. Van Dam knew his name, and that he would oppose the dance even more strongly than did Aunt; and I wished that I could go without him. But it was useless to think of this, with even the General suggesting a bodyguard. I resolved that he should at least consult a decent tailor.

"Why not have detectives as guards—as if I wore a fortune in diamonds?" I grumbled.

"Let us at least have Mr. Burke. Now, Helen, what do you propose to wear?" concluded the General.

Mrs. Van Dam took an extraordinary interest in my toilette. She even came to see my new evening dress fitted, and put little Mrs. Edgar into such a flutter that she prodded me with pins. I'll simply have to ask Father to increase my allowance; cheap white silk, clouded with tulle, was the best I could manage.

"H'm—Empire; simple and graceful," pronounced Oracle. "Square neck, Helen, or round?"

"Why—I've never worn a low dress—not really low," I said, longing but dubious. "Pa says—"

"Nonsense!"

"A shame!" chimed Mrs. Edgar.

And it would have been a shame to hide my neck and arms. I laughed when they cut away their interfering linings from the white column of my throat, and left across my shoulders only wisps of tulle. And last night, when I came to dress, I laughed again, and kissed the entrancing flesh, so firm and soft and gleaming faintly pink, and then I blushed because Aunt Marcia saw me do it. I worship the miracle of my own fairness. I could scarcely bear to put gloves on, even.

Miss Baker gathered all my shining hair into the loose knot that suits me, and put roses at my girdle and into the misty tulle about my shoulders. Ethel fitted on my slippers, and brought her fan and her lace handkerchief, and when I had smiled for one last time at the parted scarlet lips and the brilliant eyes that smiled back at me from the mirror, and had turned reluctantly from my dressing table, I was still joyous at remembrance of the light, the grace, the marvel of the vision I had seen reflected, that had seemed fairly to float in the dancing rose light of its own happiness.

Down in the hall the family were waiting, with John and Mr. Hynes; and, as I glided into sight on the stairway, Milly behind me, the Judge looked up at us, quoting with heavy playfulness:—

"She seizes hearts, not waiting for consent, Like sudden death that snatches unprepared.

"How many conquests will satisfy you to-night, fair Princesses? Milly, will two young men answer instead of one old one?" He had been exempted from serving on my bodyguard.

"Bake! Death! How can you," sputtered Aunt. "Come, girls, the carriage is waiting.

"Wish I could dance," whispered Ethel, reaching up to touch my flowers—a pathetic little figure poised on her best foot.

"Oh, I wish you could! I wish you were going," I replied hastily, bending to kiss the little creature, the better to hide my sudden consciousness of my bared shoulders.

All in the room were looking at me as if never before had they beheld my beauty. John's strained eyes seemed to plead with me for an answering glance of affection, and I knew that Ned—though I wasn't conscious of looking at him at all—was alternately white and red as I was myself. I felt his glance so confused and passionate and withal so impetuous that, as Aunt Marcia lifted my wrap and I went down to the carriage, my heart beat violently, and I sank back into my corner in a frightful, blissful maze of fear and ecstasy.

But even then I didn't know what had happened to me.

We had but a few blocks to go, and before I had recovered, a man in livery was opening the carriage door at the mouth of a canvas tunnel which seemed to dive under a great house that towered so far above the street as to look almost narrow. We passed through the tunnel, another man opened a door almost at the street level, and we advanced into a hall extending the entire width of the house, so brilliantly lighted and so spacious that I caught my breath at thought of our errand, seeing that the size of the place and its splendour so far exceeded what I had supposed.

I clutched at Aunt's hand as if to stop her in front of the huge fireplace, where logs, crackling on tall "firedogs" of twisted iron, gave out a yellow blaze; but then quickly such a different terror and wonder and joy came again upon me that I lost consciousness of everything but Ned; and the masses of ferns and palms through which we were moving—the doll-like servants in silk stockings and knee breeches, their scarlet coats emblazoned with the monogram of the Van Dams—faded out of sight. Yet I never once glanced in his direction.

We had to go to the third floor for the dressing rooms; but in spite of those minutes of grace, when a maid had removed my wraps—she started with amazement as she did so—my cheeks were still aflame.

Mrs. Baker and Milly fussed with my dress, and Aunt became incoherent in her efforts to soothe and encourage me; for she feared the ordeal before us, and thought that I feared it also. And I was afraid, but not of meeting any person in that house, save one. I quivered at the thought that outside the door Ned was waiting, that we must go out to him, that I might even be obliged to speak to him. And yet I longed to see him again, to be with him—somewhere, away from them all.

Perhaps at last I was beginning to understand.

The General had been sent for, and I kept close to her and to Peggy, when they went down with our party to the parlours on the second floor. There, at our entrance, groups of people seemed to divide with an eager buzz that at any other time would have been ravishing music. Last night I didn't know that I heard it, though now I remember how splendidly apparelled women and sombre-coated men turned their heads as we passed. Of course word had spread that the beautiful Miss Winship was expected.

It was almost in a dream that I stood before Mrs. Henry Van Dam—a short, heavy woman, in purple velvet, flashing with diamonds. Without a vestige of awkwardness or timidity I answered her effusive welcome, and the greetings of her grayish wisp of a husband, and of Mr. and Mrs. Marmaduke Van Dam—both thin and grave; her neck cords standing out under her diamond collar. And of little Mr. Robert Van Dam. And of Mr. Bellmer—a pink, young, plump thing, all white waistcoat and bald head, just as I remembered him at the Opera.

I held a reception of my own. I did it easily. After the first moments Ned's presence excited me. I was always conscious of his nearness; I felt that whether I talked or was silent—though I was never allowed to be that—to whatever part of the room he went, his glowing eyes never left me. And there came to me a thrilling confidence that he understood. He knew that to me all these people were so much lace, so many blotches of white complexion, so many pincushions of silk or lustrous satin stuck through with jewels. He knew that I cared for no one of them; for nothing; not even for my beauty, except that—thank God!—it pleasured him.

I knew that perfect beauty had come to me last night—had come because I loved and was loved; and because Love was not the pale shadow I had called by its name, but a rapture that was in my heart and in my face and in the faces 'round me and in the music that swelled from the great ballroom!

I had no idea of time, but perhaps it wasn't long before the General manoeuvred me from the sitting-out rooms and across the hall to join the dancers. Mrs. Baker and John were with us; Ned was not, but I knew that he would follow.

It was a big apartment that we entered, occupying the entire end of the second floor towards the street, perhaps thirty feet by forty and twenty high; for an instant I was dazzled by the gleam of white and gold, the rise of pilasters at door and window, the shimmer of soft, bright hangings and everywhere the cheat of mirrors. I breathed delight at sight of the lovely ceiling all luminous—no lights showed anywhere, yet the air was transfused by a rosy glow. The next minute I had forgotten this in the pulse of the music and the blur of moving figures; my favourite waltz was sounding, and the scene was one of fairyland.

"Shall we dance?" asked John, and I came to myself in a panic. Dance with John—there? I hadn't thought of that. Of course I must, but—why, his step is abominable! It always was!

"As you please," I said with the best grace I could muster, glancing nervously up at him. He looked well in his new evening clothes, but his face was set in grim lines of endurance, and I went on with guilty haste to forestall question or reproach:—

"I hope you waltz better than you used."

"I'm afraid I don't," said he dryly.

And he didn't. I simply couldn't dance with him. He never thought about what he was doing or where he was going. I looked back despairingly at the General, grimacing involuntarily as I gathered my skirts from under his feet; and I had an odd notion that she smiled with malicious satisfaction. Could she have reckoned upon weaning me from him by a display of his awkwardness? I felt nettled at both of them.

"Helen," he said abruptly, as we laboured along the crowded floor, "do you remember our last dance—at the Commencement ball?"

The night of our betrothal! What a time to remind me of it! I had just seen Ned and Milly join the group we had left; and as they, too, began to dance, I felt a stab of pain that made me answer angrily—we were barely escaping collision with another couple:—

"If it's only at Commencement that you care to dance—"

He tightened his grip upon me almost roughly, then took me back to my Aunt without a word.

I tried to reason myself out of my pettishness, to atone to John, poor fellow! But my eyes followed Ned and Milly among the graceful, flying figures, and my feet tapped the floor impatiently until, presently, the music stopped and they came to us. Then Ned's parted lips said something, and then—as the music recommenced, I was in his arms and, almost without my own knowledge or volition, was moving around the room.

Moving, not dancing—floating in a rosy light, away and away from them all, into endless space, my hand in his, his breath on my cheek; always to go on, I felt; on and on, to the dim borderland between this earth and Heaven.

Presently his eyes told me that something was happening. The dancers had been too busily engaged to pay much heed to my first brief adventure, but in the intermission of the music I had been noticed, and now I saw that there was an open space about us. Here and there a couple stood as they had risen from their seats, while others, who had begun to dance, had come to a pause. Slender girls in clouds of gauze and fat matrons panting in satins were gazing in our direction. In the doorway were gathered people from the parlours.

"Are they looking at us? We must stop," I whispered.

"Looking at you, not us. But don't stop; not yet—Helen!"

"Helen!" He had called my name! My eyes must have shown with bliss and terror. I had an almost overmastering desire to whisper his name also, to answer the entreaty of his voice, the clasp of his fingers. But I forced myself to remember how many eyes were watching.

"I—we must stop," I said.

"Not yet; unless—we shall dance together again?"

I scarcely heard the "yes" I breathed. I shouldn't have known what I had said but for the sudden light in his eyes, the firmer pressure of his arm.

My feet didn't seem to touch the floor, as he gently constrained me when I would have ceased to dance, and kept me circling round with him until we came opposite my seat; then he put me into it as naturally as if I had been tired.

Tired! Our faces told—they must have told our story. But the others were blind—blind! John had risen as if to meet us, but if he took note at all of my flushed face, he doubtless thought me frightened.

It was exultation, not fright. I did not heed the following eyes, when, as gliding figures began to cover the floor again, John took me back to the parlours. I went with him submissively; I thought of nothing but the joy of my life, the love of my lover. I shall think of nothing else to the end of my days.

Ned went with me, confused and impulsive and ardent as John was attentive and curiously formal. But I wasn't allowed to remain with either of them. I didn't wish to do so. I was glad that people crowded about me—men in black coats all alike, whose talk was as monotonous as their broad expanses of shirt front or their cat's eye finger rings. But I tried to listen and answer that I might hide from John my tumult.

Before long I danced again—this time with some black coat; then with another and another and another; and, at last, once more with Ned.

We scarcely spoke, but he did not hide from me the fervour of his look, nor I from him the wild joy of mine. There was no need of words when all was understood, but as he put his arm around me, the tinkling music receded until I could hardly hear it, the figures about us grew indistinct—and in all the world there were left only he and I.

"Once there was another Helen," he said. His voice caressed my name.

"There have been many; which Helen?"

I so loved the word as he had spoken it that I must repeat it after him.

"The Helen; there was never another—until you. She was terrible as an army with banners; fair as the sea or the sunset. Men fought for her; died for her. She had hair that meshed hearts and eyes that smote. Sometimes I think—do you believe in soul transmigration?"

My heart beat until it choked me. Some voice far in the depths of my soul warned me that I must check him—we must wait until I—he—Milly—

"Sometimes; who does not? But Prof. Darmstetter would say that it was nonsense," I whispered, and waited without power to say another word.

"It is true; Helen is alive again, and all men worship her."

His eyes were so tenderly regardful that—I could not help it. Once more I raised mine and we read each other's souls. And the music seized us and swept us away with its rapture and its mystery.

The rest of the evening comes to me like a dream, through which I floated in the breath of flowers and the far murmur of unheeded talk. I saw little, heard little, yet was faintly conscious that I was the lodestar of all glances and exulting in my triumph. It was marvellous!

I didn't dance much. People don't at New York balls. But whether I danced or talked with tiresome men, my heart beat violently because he would see the admiration I won—he would know that I, who was Helen, a Queen to these others, lived only for him, was his slave.

There was supper, served at an endless number of little tables; there was a cotillon which I danced with Mr. Bellmer. John stayed in the parlours with Aunt, and Ned danced with Milly, but I was not jealous.

Jealous of Milly, with her thin shoulders rising out of her white dress, her colourless eyes and her dull hair dressed like mine with roses? Jealous, when his glance ever sought me; when, as often as we approached in a figure, if I spoke, his eyes answered; if I turned away my face, his grew heavy with pain?

Once in the dance I gave a hand to each of them. His burned like my own; hers was cold.

"Tired, Milly?" I asked, and indeed I meant kindly.

"No," she said sulkily, turning to the next dancer.

I couldn't even pity her, I was so happy.

I couldn't bear to have the beautiful evening end, and yet I was glad to go home—to be alone.

When John lifted me from the carriage, his clasp almost crushed my hand; poor John, how he will feel the blow! I didn't wait to say good-night to Aunt; I didn't look at Milly, but ran away to my room.

Oh, indeed, the child doesn't love him! Milly knows no more about Love than I did two months ago. She's bloodless, cold; I do not wrong her. Some day she will learn what Love is, as I have learned, and will thank me for saving her from a great mistake. I hope she will!

I have saved myself from the error of my life. I'm not the same woman I was yesterday. It makes me blush to think how I looked forward to the adulation of the nobodies at that dance. I care for no praise but his. Why, I'll go in rags, I'll work, slave—I'll hide myself from every eye but his, if that will make him love me better. Or I will be Empress of beautiful women, if that is his pleasure, and give him all an Empress's love.

I couldn't sleep last night. I know that he could not. I know that he has been watching, waiting, as I have, for to-day, when he must come to me.

CHAPTER VIII.

A LITTLE BELTED EARL.

Feb. 4.

Five wasted days; and nothing more to tell, though some women mightn't think so; nothing but—another triumph!

I've been to the Charity Ball. I've danced with a Lord—such a little fellow to be a belted Earl! I have scored over brilliant women of Society.

It isn't the simple country girl of a few weeks ago whom Ned loves, but a wonderful woman—a Personage; and I am glad, glad, glad! Though no woman could be good enough for him. I'm not; I am only beautiful enough. And oh, so feverishly happy, except that waiting is hard, so hard. I'm so restless that I scarcely know myself.

If I might tell him that I love him—as other Queens do! I am afraid of his glance when he is here, because he knows. But when he's not here, I imagine that he does not know, that he will never come again unless he learns the truth, and I say it over and over: "I love him! I love him!" and am glad and panic-stricken as if he had heard.

I have never had any other secret, but the Bacillus, I would sooner die than tell that, to Ned. My love I would cry aloud, but I cannot until he speaks, and he cannot speak until—has Milly no pride?

I thought—I thought that the very day after the dance—why, I could have rubbed my eyes, when I went down to a late breakfast, to find Mrs. Baker chirping with sleepy amiability, and Milly doling out complacent gossip to Ethel. The very sky had fallen for me to gather rainbow gold—and here we were living prose again, just as before.

I had struggled with my joy through all the short night, for I had imagined them suffering and angry; but I do believe that on the whole Milly had enjoyed the dance, and liked to shine even by her reflected importance as the beautiful Miss Winship's cousin. She had been vexed by Ned's admiration for me; and yet—and yet she didn't understand. The stupid! Didn't see that his love is mine.

There may have been a pause as I came, dazzling them like a great rosy light; but then my aunt stifled a yawn as she said, "Here's Nelly," and the chatter went on as before.

But I didn't hear it. Gliding confusedly into a seat, I had opened a note from John. "—Called West on business; start to-day," it said; and then indeed I began to feel the tangle, the terrible tangle—my cousins blind, John gone, when I was counting the minutes until I could see him. Oh, I must be free! It is his right to know the truth, and—what can Ned say while I'm affianced? I am Milly's cousin, and he John's friend.

I hurried to escape. I longed to be by myself that I might recall Ned's every look and word. Without reason—against reason—I felt that at any minute Ned might come, and waves of happiness and dread and impatience swept over me, and kept me smiling and singing and running anxiously to my glass.

Ned loves my beauty; I pulled down my hair and reknotted it and pulled it down again, fearful—so foolish have I grown—lest I might fail to please him; and frowned over my dresses and rummaged bureau drawers for ribbons, until Milly, who had tapped at my door and entered almost without my notice, asked abruptly:—

"Who's coming?"

"No one; John—no, he's out of town."

I flushed to see her regard the litter about me with calm deliberateness.

"Oh, you don't have to take pains for John," she said with a short laugh. "But come; Meg's down stairs."

The General had followed Milly up; she whisked into the room, showering me with congratulations on my success at the dance, she claimed me for a dinner, a concert—half a dozen engagements.

"Oh, by the way," she said, checking her flood of gossip. "Who d'you suppose is to be at the Charity Ball? Lord Strathay. You'll talk with a real Earl, Nelly—for of course he'll ask to be introduced."

"Another dance!" groaned my aunt, who had trotted panting in the General's wake; "I'm sure I wish I'd never said she might go; I'm as nervous as a witch after last evening."

Poor Aunt; she looked tired. She's really becoming the great objector.

Such a day as it was! I started at every footstep; my heart gave an absurd jump at every movement of the door hangings. Of course I knew that Ned couldn't—that we mustn't see each other until—but Ned is mine; it's so wonderful that he loves me. If I were Milly, I wouldn't remain an hour—not a minute!—in such a false position.

Yet the next day passed just like that day, and the next and the next and the next; every morning a note from John, scrawled on a railway train, and begging for a line from me. I wrote, poor fellow; so that's settled, and I'm very sorry for him.

I got rid of one morning by calling on Prof. Darmstetter. It was three weeks since I had seen him, and he was testy.

"I see much in t'e newspapers about t'e beautiful Mees Veensheep, but v'y does she neglect our experiment?" he demanded, following me across the laboratory to my old table. "V'ere are my records, my opportunities for observation? Has t'e beautiful Mees Veensheep no regard for science?"

"You've always said she hadn't, and pretended to be glad of it; I won't contradict," I returned. "But hurry up with your records; it doesn't need science or the newspapers, does it, to tell you that the beautiful Miss Winship cannot go about very freely?"

"Ach, no," said he humbly; for he could not look upon my face and hold his anger. "If I haf not alreaty gifen to Mees Veensheep t'e perfect beauty t'at I promised, I cannot conceive greater perfection. You are satisfied vit' our vork—vit' me?"

"Yes, I'm satisfied," I said coolly.

Just as soon as I could, I left him. Oh, I ought to be grateful, more than ever grateful now that the Bacillus has won for me the most blessed of earth's gifts—the gift of love. But I'm not; I wish I might never again see Prof. Darmstetter; he reminds me—he makes me feel unreal. As for his records, the experiment is finished. We have succeeded, and I want to enjoy our success and forget its processes. And why not? He knows in his heart that we have no further need of each other.

My real records now are public; the Charity Ball last night added a brilliant chapter.

The Charity Ball! How calmly I write that! I hope it may be the last triumph I need to win in public without Ned; but I enjoyed it. There was no awkward John to spoil my dancing, no jealous Milly, no over-anxious Aunt. I had Mrs. Marmaduke Van Dam for my chaperon—more the great lady, with all her thin rigidity, than Mrs. Henry; and for companion the General, almost as young and light-hearted as I.

And I was mistress of myself, strong and self-contained. Instead of being confused when all eyes were bent upon me, I had a new feeling of glad self-command. I felt the rhythm of my flawless beauty, my pure harmonies of face and form, and found it natural that fine toilets should be foils to my cheap white dress, and that I should be the centre around which the great assembly revolved. I'm really getting used to myself.

I danced constantly, danced myself tired, holding warm at my heart this one thought: that in the morning Ned would read of my triumphs and be proud of them, and rejoice because she about whom the whole city is talking thinks only of him.

My partner in the march was "Hughy" Bellmer, as the General calls him; I begin to know him well. He's harmless, with his drawl and his round pink face that shines with admiration. Deliciously he patronized the ball.

"Aw, Miss Winship," he said, "too large, too public. People prefer to dawnce in their own houses."—The ball was at the Waldorf-Astoria.—"The smaller a dawnce is, the greater it is, don't ye see."

"But aren't any great people here?" I asked demurely. "I am just a country mouse, and I've really counted on seeing one or two great people, Mr. Bellmer—besides you, of course."

"The Charity Ball is—aw, y'know, Miss Winship, an institution," he explained, fairly strutting in his complacency at my deference; "and as an institution, not as a Society event, ye understand, it is patronized by the most prominent ladies in the city."

"How good of them!" I cried, laughing.

He was so funny! But he was useful, too; he knew about everybody.

Some of the women I shall remember—Mrs. Sloane Schuyler, leader of the smallest and most exclusive of Society's many sets—a handsome woman with well-arched eyebrows; and Mrs. Fredericks, of the same group; sallow, with great black eyes, talking with tremendous animation; and Mrs. Terry—of the newly rich; Mr. Bellmer's aunt; dumpy, diamonded and disagreeable-looking.

"But where are the famous beauties?" I asked eagerly. "Won't they dance, even for charity, except in their own houses?"

Some of them were there; tall, pale, stylish girls, or women whose darkened eyes and faces mealy with powder told of a bitter fight with time. Why, I haven't seen a woman whom I thought beautiful since—since I became so.

"Aw, Miss Winship, really, y'know, you have no rivals," said my partner.

I hadn't supposed him clever enough to guess what I was thinking.

"Oh, yes I have—one," I said; "isn't there somewhere here a real live Lord?"

But just then we joined Meg, and it was she who pointed out to me "The Earl of Strathay—the Twelfth Earl of Strathay," in a whisper of comical respect and deference.

He wasn't very impressive—just a thin, pale young fellow with a bulbous head, big above and small below; but I was glad to do Meg a service; for of course she wished to meet him, and of course Lord Strathay was presented to the beautiful Miss Winship and her chaperons.

Then I danced with him. I felt as if I were amusing a nice boy; he hardly came to my shoulder. I asked him if he liked America.

He wasn't too much of a boy to reply:—

"Like is a feeble word to voice one's impressions of the land of lovely women."

And then he looked at me. Oh, he did admire me immensely, and I took quite a fancy to him in turn, though it seemed pathetic that such a poor little fellow—I don't believe he's twenty-one—should carry the weight of his title. I danced with his cousin, too, a Mr. Poultney; and wherever I went Strathay's eyes followed me wistfully.

Meg danced with Strathay and amused me by her elation. She hadn't really recovered from it to-day.

To-day! Blessed to-day! Lord Strathay's only an Earl; to-day there came to me—Ned! Oh, this has been the gladdest, most provoking day of my life, for I had only a moment with him.

It was Mrs. Baker's "afternoon," and we had a good many callers; the fame of my beauty has spread. They gazed furtively at me as they talked and sipped their tea, and it was all very stupid until—oh, I didn't know how perturbed, how unhappy I'd been, until—I glanced up for a word with the General, who came late, and behind her I saw—Him. He came to me as if there were no one else in the room.

Ah, I have been unhappy! I have known that he would try to keep away from me. Useless! Useless to fight with love! It's too strong for us. At sight of him joy like a fire flashed through my veins.

But there were my cousins; there was Meg—she looked at him impatiently, I fancied, as she has sometimes looked at John. Poor John, it didn't need her surveillance to break his feeble hold upon my heart. And there they stayed. They wouldn't go. They stayed, and talked, while I shivered and grew hot with fear and gladness and the excitement of his presence; they talked—of all senseless topics—about the ball.

"Why, Mr. Hynes, we've missed you," said Ethel carelessly, at sight of him. "Oh, Meg, tell us about last night, won't you? Helen's said nothing; almost nothing at all."

"Oh, what is there to tell?"

It made me impatient. How could I chatter nothings when Ned was by my side, smiling down at me so confusedly?

"Most girls would find enough! You should have heard the dowagers cluck, Ethel!" exclaimed the General, her face losing its vexed look at the thought. "It was bad weather for their broods. You never saw such a scurrying, pin feathers sticking every which way. The proudest hour of Hughy Bellmer's life was when the march started, and he walked beside Helen—same parade as always—through that wide hall between the Astor gallery and the big ball room; committeemen and patronesses at the head and the line tailing. You may believe the plumes drooped and the war paint trickled. Nelly was the only girl looked at. Milly, you should have been there? Headache? You look pale beside Helen."

"Oh, I don't hope to rival Nelly's colour; she looks like—like somebody's 'Femme Peinte par Elle-même.'" said Milly with a laugh that might have been innocent. Since Ned's entrance she had grown white and my cheeks had burned, until there was reason for her jest.

"Is Mr. Bellmer handsome—handsome enough to be Nelly's partner?" persisted Ethel, impatient for her gossip—to her it's all there is of gayety. "And is Lord Strathay—nice?"

"Mr. Bellmer's an overgrown cherub with a monocle," I laughed. Ned shall not think me one of those odious, fortune-hunting girls.

"Hughy's pretty good-looking, Ethie," said Meg, amiably; "and the best fellow in the world; but probably not of a calibre to interest a college girl. And Lord Strathay"—the name rolled slowly from her tongue, as if she were loth to let it go—"is a charming fellow. Just succeeded to the title. He's travelling with his cousin, the Hon. Stephen Allardyce Poultney. Nelly danced with him. And did she tell you that Mrs. Sloane Schuyler begged to have her presented? Sister to a Duchess, you know. We'll have Helen in London next. Nobody there to compare with her. Just what Strathay said, I do assure you."

London! Men of title, and great ladies and the glitter of a court! Once I may have dreamed of power and place and the rustle of trailing robes, and being admired of all men and hated of all women, but now in my annoyance I longed to cry out: "Why can't you talk sense? Why babble of such silly things?"

To make matters worse, Uncle came just in time to hear the General's last remark.

"I do not think our Princess would leave us," he said, "even if—

'at her feet were laid
The sceptres of the earth exposed on heaps
To choose where she would reign.'"

It was scarcely to be borne. I knew he was thinking of John, and I caught myself looking down at my hand, praying that Ned might see that I no longer wore the opal ring.

Then came Aunt Frank with a headache, looking ill enough, indeed; and I was glad to jump up and serve her some tea.

"Milly has a headache, too," I said; and she looked from Milly's vexed, cold face to mine, almost peevishly replying:—

"Nothing ever seems to ail you, child."

After all the weary waiting, Ned and I exchanged only a word. But the word was a delight and a comfort.

More than once the Judge has suggested for me a short absence from the city to win a respite from the newspapers; and this morning, when he saw that the Echo had smuggled an East Side girl into the ballroom last night to tell the Bowery, in Boweryese, how the other half lives, her descriptions of me so incensed him that he almost insisted upon Aunt's packing for Bermuda at once. Ned must have heard of that.

"You will not go away?" he said when he took leave of me.

"You know that Uncle—"

"You will not?"

"No."

I couldn't speak steadily. The low, passionate entreaty told me that he had come to receive that pledge, and I gave it.

Oh, now, now, I cannot be unhappy! I know that he has tried to stay away from me, and why he has not succeeded. Love has been too mighty for us both. Love has conquered us, and I—I shall never again be unhappy!